Jean Preston - Sledgehammer

They heard the blaring honk of a truck’s horn. Headlights flashed and blinded those who faced them. The soldier was returning. He honked his horn several times, approaching at increasing speed. Kirwyn and the other soldiers one by one scattered. Loma fired a beam into the shield, stepping away from the road. The truck hit the shield – and continued moving. Four metal legs sent blue sparks flying over the road. Gabriel had two of his legs clasp onto the truck, trying to climb atop it. The shield flickered and became malformed, struggling to adapt to the rapidly changing environment. Gabriel looked at the driver coldly, his shield flickering. The soldier returned the look and honked the horn again, maintaining eye contact, they crashed into a large tree.

Loma ran up to the site of the crash, rifle drawn. Smoke belched forth from the engine. A tattooed man was hunched over the steering wheel, blood dripping down his face. Gabriel was crushed. His mechanical head and fleshy arms strew out over the hood of the truck. Yellow foul smelling liquid poured out from his face holes, and from his chest which was flattened between truck and tree.

Soldiers came and gently removed their bleeding comrade from his seat, taking him to the medics. They tried the engine again, keeping an eye on the monstrosity that lay before them. Surprisingly the truck burred into life, still coughing up black gas, they reversed and Gabriel lay on his face in the mud, a shell of himself. They examined his corpse. Some vomited from the smell. Loma was fortunate to be sealed within her suit. She traced fingers over his large metal skull, feeling the rivets and the wires. Looking over displays that yet still ticked on.

“He’s still alive,” said Loma.

Saburo parked his bike and walked up to the bar. He heard old music, bassy and muffled. Two bikers stood outside the entrance smoking. They wore red leather jackets and had their hair in top knots, their beards were a mangled mess of black wire. Saburo nodded to them. They stared at him wide eyed.

“Hand over you weapons.”

Saburo unclasped his Mauser and handed it to one of the bouncers.

He entered the bar. The music engulfed him. The smell of smoke and liquor and piss lingered in the air. The bar was foggy, with crowds of bikers huddled around tables, roaring with laughter, smashing bottles, quarrelling, swaying drunkenly. Rising to their feet suddenly and wrestling. It was mostly men, a few women here and there, some people looked up from their drinks to spy on Saburo. He nodded and smiled, few returned the smile. Navigating past a portly biker carrying four sloshing pints, and a group of drunken girls heading for the toilets – they giggled as they passed him, Saburo sat down on a barstool and sighed contentedly.

“What can I get you love?” -The bartender was a bald woman in her fifties, morbidly obese, wearing a tank top.

“I’ll have a shot of whiskey,” said Saburo, flashing her a cheesy smile. She smiled weakly and nodded. She slid the shot across the counter, but a gloved hand intercepted it and brought it to his lips. He was a young man, strongly built, with bleached white hair, wearing a dirty plastic yellow jacket, with yellow metal shoulder pads. He sat beside Saburo, and two of his yellow comrades joined him.

“My, my, my,” said the stranger. “If it isn’t the little Cavalier prince.” He slapped a hand on Saburo’s shoulder. Saburo flinched and stood up from his stool.

“This is neutral ground,” said the bartender, reaching for her sawed off shotgun.

The stranger raised his hands. “It’s just banter,” he said. “Another shot for my friend.”

“Hello Bill,” said Saburo. He snatched the shot before Bill had a chance to, he downed it and grimaced slightly.

“Last time I saw you—” said Bill. “You was turning your tail and riding for the sunset. Your boys were still fighting as I recall—”

Saburo raised his finger for another shot.

“Surprised you mustered up the nuts to come in here. Alone.”

Another Yellowjacket leaned in on the bar, staring at Saburo with mad green eyes.

“Well that was a long time ago,” said Saburo, slowly draining his glass.

“Doesn’t seem that way to me,” said Bill. “I lost a lot of good men that day.”

“We lost a lot of good men too,” said Saburo.

“ I doubt it ,” said Bill.

“And we’re both gonna lose a lot more.”

Bill’s eyes twitched. “Is that so?”

“Have people been laying mines on your highway?”

Bill grabbed Saburo by the scruff of his jacket and lifted him up.

A Yellowjacket vaulted over the bar and grabbed the shotgun. Another held Saburo’s arms locked behind him.

Bill smashed a glass. “I fuckin’ hate Cavaliers,” he whined, drawing the glass to Saburo’s eyes. Women screamed and men shouted. In Saburo’s peripheral vision tables were overturned, makeshift weapons were drawn.

“They mined us too!” said Saburo urgently. “Fucking bastards!”

“We all know it was you lot,” said Bill, incensed.

“Really? Why didn’t we attack any of your stations? We immobilise you – then don’t take the advantage. Why?”

Bill considered this. “Because you’re cowards,” said Bill.

“Our roads got mined too. Every major road has been sabotaged in some way. Ask around. I have . “

Bill looked around at the patrons. There were shouts of drunken agreement. Little snippets of woe. Somebody tore down our bridge. The computers on our bikes were fried. There were ambushes in the dark.

“The roads are the one thing that connects the island. We control the roads. We protect the trade, we pass on the information. Somebody’s trying to stop us. All of us.”

“Who?” said Bill.

Loma connected the wire to her helmet, she mimed typing in the air, as tattooed soldiery watched on, mystified. The wire lead to the corpse of Gabriel, the socket jutted out of his skull. Loma swiped away at something, then continued to type on thin air.

One of the soldiers whispered to Kirwyn – “What’s going on?”

“She’s trying to talk to him.”

“He’s dead isn’t he?”

“She told me his soul is in that box,” said Kirwyn, pointing to the bulbous mechanical device that fused to the back of his skull.

Loma stood upright. The text she had been fiddling with evaporated, as did the forest and all the soldiers around her, replaced by bright white light. She stood back, corrected herself and stood forward again. The white light faded to black. Suddenly a white diamond shape appeared, blasting an obnoxious tone. She jumped. The diamond shattered into multi-coloured shards that thrusted towards her face, one after the other, each one implanting in her vision, altering it slightly, accompanied by a different tone, the sound of which was disorienting.

Suddenly she was falling. The simulation felt real, moreso than any she had experienced on Avalon. She was buffeted by icy cold wind, as she passed through clouds, then saw turquoise tropical seas, she fell down, into a gaping maw in the earth, a volcano, her suit heated up, her vision became red, she was about to hit lava when all became black and temperate, then freezing cold. She was still falling, though in silence now, she passed stars, galaxies, falling.

All this faded again till she was in the dark soundless void of nothingness. She saw her own pupil, was taken out of her own body to see her own eye, and then her face, and her body. She was wearing a white tunic. She then returned to herself, seeing things with her own eyes. Her hands blurred before her, so it seemed as if she had many fingers.

She looked up, wind whipping her hair. She was on top of an onyx mountain, the sky was lilac and red lightning crackled in the distance. Pink crystal mountains bobbed and morphed thousands of miles in the distance, past an orange sorbet desert.