Darren Lemke - Gemini Man

Junior grimaced. “Sorry I ran.”

“It’s been a tough night.” Henry laughed weakly. “Where’s—”

“You okay?” Junior asked Danny, looking at her leg.

“Still kickin’,” she said. “With my other foot.”

Henry felt his heart rate come down and his breathing slow. He had a job to do and someone to protect. “How many more are out there?”

“I don’t know,” Junior said.

“What about Verris?”

“Out of commission.”

“But alive?” Henry asked.

Junior nodded, looking ashamed.

“Okay,” Henry said. “There’ll be more coming. Help me get her up—”

Danny put up both hands and shook her head emphatically. “ No. I can’t run any more. Can you ?” She drew her combat knife from its ankle sheath.

Henry looked at Junior, who nodded. They picked up their rifles and got down on their bellies, Henry facing the back of the store, Junior watching their six, and Danny keeping an eye on their three and nine. In the brief moment of quiet, Henry tapped his rifle stock twice just as Junior tapped his own three times. Then they looked at each other, surprised.

Danny smacked both their backs and gestured at the store around them: Pay attention. Henry smiled briefly, bracing himself for whatever was coming up next.

As it turned out, the attack came down.

There was a crash followed by a shower of broken glass. Shielding his face with one hand, Henry looked up to see a dark figure descending on a line, firing as he did. Henry, Danny, and Junior scattered in three different directions; Henry glimpsed the soles of Danny’s boots as she dived behind a rack of tools but Junior had disappeared completely. Junior was most likely to come out of this alive, Henry thought. Danny might make it out with Junior’s help, but even if she did, the hole in her leg might kill her anyway.

Meanwhile, the new attacker was only going after him.

Bullets chased him up one aisle and around the end of a long set of shelves, where he stopped short, watching as the guy shot through the shelves in case Henry was panicky-stupid enough to run down the other side. Then the killer stomped over the wreckage, firing in a wide arc around himself. Henry took advantage of the noise to get behind him unnoticed and fired a short burst at his back.

The killer jerked slightly, whirled on Henry, and returned the favor several times over. Henry ran up the aisle, vaulted over the wreckage of another set of shelves; his feet came down on some plastic fragments and skidded out from under him. As he fell forward, Henry tucked and rolled head over heels in a series of rapid tumbles while bullets kicked up chips of concrete under the floor covering.

The weapons fire cut off and Henry heard him drop the rifle. In the brief pause before the shooter switched to a sidearm, Henry bounced to his feet and found himself in varnishes and paints. He grabbed up some small cans and hurled them at the guy as he ran. Despite the accuracy of Henry’s aim, however, it seemed as if his attacker barely noticed them bouncing off his shoulders, his chest, even his head.

Henry tried sweeping a whole lot of cans off a shelf hoping to trip him but the guy just tromped over them, kicking them aside.

I’m gonna need a bigger can, Henry thought as he reached a shelf of gallon containers. But they were a lot harder to throw and the guy kept firing as he batted them away. Abruptly, there was a different burst of machine-gun fire, coming from behind the shooter. He broke stride, staggered a bit, then turned to fire at Junior, trading bursts with him until they both ran out.

Okay, buddy, Henry thought, let’s see if your only talent is firing a weapon you don’t even have to aim.

He ran back to varnishes in time to see the guy had found Junior and was using his head to make a dent in a five-gallon can of weatherproofing. Henry took a running jump and launched himself at the guy feet first, the same move he’d used to steal the motorcycle in Cartagena. Except the guy bent his knees and leaned back at an angle that should have been impossible for anyone to maintain without falling over. But somehow he did. Henry sailed past him and landed on Junior.

Henry rolled away from him but not quickly enough. A hard kick missed his head but caught his shoulder blade; Henry winced, feeling something crack as he went sprawling on his belly. He scrambled up, rotated his shoulders to see if anything major was broken. Mobility wasn’t impaired but it hurt like hell. Everything hurt like hell hurt right now, but at least it all hurt the same, nothing worse than anything else. The good news was, it would all hurt a hell of a lot more tomorrow.

If he lasted that long.

Henry drew his knife, and in the corner of his eye he saw Junior do the same. The masked soldier made a quick motion and produced knives in both hands. That goddam mask; when you couldn’t see your opponent’s face, you were fighting half-blind. He had to get close enough to tear the fucker’s mask off. It looked like a more compact version of Junior’s night-vision gas mask. The night vision he could understand but had the guy really expected to get tear-gassed?

He feinted to one side, then the other, making little slashes in the air. Junior feigned a lunge, stamped his foot in an old fencing move meant to distract an opponent; their masked opponent didn’t fall for it. Facing two guys with knives didn’t seem to faze him at all—his posture showed no defensive tension, no stiffness. It was as if he were sure Henry and Junior were holding rubber knives. Henry decided to disabuse him of that notion.

He backed up, then took a few running steps forward. He could see the masked guy steady himself, still holding Junior off while he prepared to bury his knife in Henry’s throat. At the last moment, however, Henry dropped to his knees and slid under his arm. It was something he’d secretly wanted to try ever since he’d seen someone do it in a movie.

There was no tiling on the floor here, just cement treated with some kind of sealant—not an ideal surface for a flashy slide. Henry felt the cement scrape through his trousers and sand off some skin. But then, it wasn’t exactly classic fighting technique—a Krav Maga instructor probably wouldn’t have approved—but he managed to slash the masked killer’s thigh without getting slashed himself.

To Henry’s surprise, the guy didn’t make a sound as he looked down at the gash in his leg—no cry of pain, not so much as a gasp or a grunt; the injury could have been on someone else’s leg for all that it affected him. A chill ran down Henry’s spine, more intense than a mere goose walking over his grave. Who the hell had trained this guy, the Manchurian Candidate? The Terminator?

Junior took advantage of the attacker’s momentary lapse of attention to circle around behind him. Realizing what Junior was going to do, Henry pushed himself to a standing position and tried to keep the guy focused on himself while Junior vaulted the ruins of a shelf for a flying kick with both feet. But unbelievably, half a second before Junior would have hit him, the guy ducked. As Junior sailed over him, the guy’s leg shot out—his wounded leg—and kicked Junior hard in the lower back.

Henry shook his head slightly, unsure if he had really just seen that. Junior rolled over as the masked fighter came towards him, and somehow heaved himself into a backwards roll, barely escaping a driving punch to his crotch.

Oh, so it’s that kind of fight, Henry thought; as if there were any other kind. That slash to the thigh still wasn’t slowing the guy down. He’d also lost one of his knives, but Henry didn’t count on that giving him or Junior any sort of advantage. Junior sprang to his feet and immediately charged the guy with his tackling move. The guy raised one leg and instead of taking him down, Junior hit his knee face first.