Rachel Caine - Terminated

He got it, instantly, and shoved her backward. “Stow it, bitch. You’ll get paid when I say you get paid.”

“I didn’t sign up for this cracker militia shit, and your friends just put a bullet in the skull of the man I found for you. You think that isn’t going to ruin my life just a little bit? You burned me, Vaughn. I’m not going to forget it.”

Patrick looked at her with the deadest eyes she’d ever seen in him, an absolute zero of emotion, and in one smooth motion reached sideways, took Walt’s gun, and aimed it at her heart.

“Fuck you,” he said, and pulled the trigger.

She felt it. Not an instant death, not quite; there was time for the shock to travel to her brain, for her heart to struggle to beat and fail and fibrillate, for shock and panic to set in. Her mouth worked, opening and closing for breath she couldn’t seem to pull into her lungs. The pain was sudden and shocking, but brief.

She saw red, and then she saw black, and then she was just . . . gone.

She’d counted on Walt’s men to be economical, and she woke up right—they’d simply dumped her limp, dead body on top of Reynolds’ in the ditch at the edge of camp. In fact, she woke up with her head pillowed on his fat-soft stomach.

For a long moment she didn’t move or react. Patrick had gone for the shortest-term kill wound he could; nanites rushed to repair heart damage, and it was much less complex than a brain repair, like what Reynolds’ little beasts were dealing with right now. He’d fixed it so she’d wake first . . . and she had.

No way to tell how much time had passed, but it was quiet now, except for the rustle of wind in trees and the normal sounds of crickets and nocturnal creatures. Bryn carefully rolled herself off. The ditch was damp and muddy, but generally free of less pleasant things. At least it wasn’t a latrine. At moments like this, she’d learned to count her blessings.

She sat there, trying to breathe slowly and calmly. Her newly repaired heart kept pounding, pounding, pounding, and she was filled with a furious, trembling rage. So tired of this, she thought. I don’t want to keep dying. Nobody should have to do this.

But she’d managed to stay with Reynolds, she was unbound, and Patrick’s actions had ensured that Walt believed him completely. Nobody could say he was a federal agent, not after watching him shoot his own girlfriend.

He’d sold it even to her. The lightless look in his eyes haunted her. Was that who Patrick really was, down deep? Someone with no soul, no compass?

Isn’t that what you are? a piece of her whispered. Aren’t you just like Jane? Remember what you did back at the river. Remember how good it felt.

She didn’t want to remember. Because remembering left her feeling not nauseated, but . . . hungry . Especially with Reynolds’ still body lying next to her in the ditch.

Easy pickings. And something in her, something frighteningly cold and logical, was telling her that if she ate a couple of pieces, they’d heal, wouldn’t they? She needed the protein.

Besides, he deserved it.

She stomped that part of her down, bolted it under steel, but it took a lot of effort, and it left her shaking. She heard crunching footsteps nearby—patrols, walking the gravel. They’d have to be quiet. Very quiet.

The fence was reinforced cement, and as far as she could see, there was no way underneath it. . . . They were diligent about their security, which was too bad, really. She remembered the motion lights, too. No going out the front, for certain. Maybe they’d neglected to put the same system on the side of the compound, since it faced only the forest, but she had to assume that Walt’s paranoia would have won out, even if all the security ever revealed were startled deer and the occasional wandering bear.

There had to be another way out. Walt was one of those men who never had just one entrance and exit. He’d have something else, something concealed, probably under the camp, where he could evacuate his people in a crisis. At the very least, he’d have a defensible bunker. . . .

No. She thought it through, and the post-death fog finally lifted. The correct answer—the only answer—was to stay dead.

She eased herself down into position. There was light on the eastern horizon, so dawn wouldn’t be far away.

Just in case, though, she quietly leaned her weight on Reynolds’ unresisting throat, and smashed his hyoid bone. Something else for his nanites to work on, and something to keep him out. . . . Having him wake up hysterical wouldn’t do, not now.

Not yet.

The men arrived, grumbling, before dawn even blushed; there were four of them, and the first two climbed in, grabbed Bryn’s wrists and ankles, and slung her out to roll bonelessly across the gravel, where she was picked up by the other two. They didn’t make any comments. She was just a job to them, something to be finished before breakfast.

The other two grunted and struggled getting Reynolds out, but soon they were moving. Bryn kept limp, though it was an uncomfortable position for her head hanging backward. She hoped the dim light would disguise the beating pulse that was probably visible on the exposed skin.

Still, they had absolutely no reason to check her, or even look at her for long. She was dead. And they just wanted to be rid of her before she started to make a mess.

The men carrying her went in silence, and they moved with assurance. At least one of them was wearing night vision; had to be, from the general speed at which they went down the hill.

One of them stopped, putting a strain on her feet, and Bryn resisted the urge to react. “Wait,” he said. “Where are you going?”

“Gully,” the other one said. “Come on.”

“We’re supposed to bury them, Walt said.”

“Hard work to bury them. We toss ’em over, they get broken up in the fall. Come winter, nothing left but bones anyway. Nobody’s gonna find ’em down there except the bugs, and even if somebody does, there won’t be enough left to identify. Save us a couple of hours, too.”

“I don’t know. Seems—”

“Move it,” the first man said, and his voice had gone hard. “I ain’t tramping around here for my health, and I ain’t digging graves for these two assholes. You want to pray over ’em, pray over the gully that they get eaten quick.”

The second man shut up, and started following the first man’s lead. The gully. Bryn hoped it was a long way off, but she didn’t expect it would be. These didn’t seem like men who wanted to go to a whole lot of trouble for a body dump.

She was right. They slowed and stopped after about five minutes more, and she heard the men with Reynolds’ body pausing nearby.

“Jesus, this guy’s heavy,” one of them said, and groaned. “Ate his weight in cheeseburgers or something.”

“I could kill a cheeseburger right now. Maybe two.”

“Shut up and get him over the edge, and we can get chow,” snapped the man standing over Bryn. “Unless you’re so attached you want to take him back and play house.”

“Fuck you, you’re the one with the cute bald chick.”

“Cute and fucking dead.”

“Hot, though.”

“Shut up, you freak—”

And right then, Reynolds woke up, with a vengeance. And a shriek like a devil coming straight up out of hell with a pitchfork up his ass.

There was a chorus of alarm from the body disposal unit—hers and Reynolds alike. She heard his body fall with a thump to the ground, and she was dropped just a second later. She opened her eyes.

All four of the men had backed off and were staring with understandable horror at the dead man flailing and screaming on the ground.