Off the Edge of the World

Allison glanced behind her. The enemy machine was down the street. She watched it scan with its head. Her heart, which had been going in high gear ever since she hit herself with the stim, skipped a beat. Her mind refocused. The rest of the team would be here soon, but they had no idea what they were up against. That, and Charlotte was currently without any sort of weapon system to do combat with these new enemies. Allison would need their help in order to get back to base, though. She collected her thoughts and put a plan into action as she took off through the building. Now that she had a bit of time to see, she noticed that her casket had been punched into an office building. Which as far as landings went, was pretty good considering she didn’t hit a factory or a chemical plant.

She took off towards the other end. Staircases were usually on the outsides of the offices, so that was her best bet. As she looked around, there were tremors coming through. She ducked into a cubicle and looked outside. Another machine with a different camouflage pattern moved past the building. Things had gone from bad to worse in a split-second. Still, there was nothing she could do. She was a demi-machina out of her ARES, and on the run from two different enemies now. The possibility of more started to nag at her, but she put it out of her head for now. There was no use in worrying about “what ifs” when she was in a bail out scenario. The stimulants were affecting her mind in good ways and bad, but it would be worse when they wore off. She had to keep up in order to not crash. And yet, she couldn’t see any real way of getting out of this in one piece today. TARFU. She thought. Forget it. I can wait to call up CSAR later.

The chances of getting a Combat Search And Rescue (CSAR) mission right now were a no-go with enemy forces in the area. She would have to put distance between them and her, and a good amount too. Command would say so to minimize the chances of the rescue helicopter being spotted and taken down. But she was putting the cart before the horse. First, she had to get out of the city and out of sight. If she popped on the radio here, it was almost like asking for someone to blow her up. So now it was time to get moving. Allison grabbed the straps on her rucksack to make sure it was there, reassuring her that her gear was still with her.

Then she remembered the other threat. The one not seen. She pulled the rucksack off and dug around inside until she pulled out two firearm suppressors. She attached them to her PDW and her pistol. They were standard for every survival kit in order to minimize the chances of drawing out a pack of infected if she came into contact with them. And seeing how they always hung around the battlefield like scavengers, she could count on running into at least one or two on her way out. She threw the rucksack back on and pushed out from the cubicle. Her boots thumped on the floor as she moved through the office; her PDW’s stock tucked up under her armpit. She held it as steady as she could while keeping up her pace. She made for a door at the end of the hall and pushed it open. The muzzle of her gun went first, followed by her head. She scanned up, down, and then right as she fully opened the door. She stepped off to the side and saw stairs leading down. Bingo. She went down with her body at an angle as she swept the stairwell. She had to be quick. There was no telling if or when they were going to come back and look for her.

Allison was thankful that the neural integration suits were thermally regulated. That helped keep her warm in the cold and cool in the heat, but it also shielded her thermal signature. Not entirely, but just enough to blend in. But the problem was the head, where a lot of heat is generated and lost. If they were paying close attention, she’d be found eventually. That thought kept her feet moving as she descended to the ground floor. Once there, she saw the fire exit. Her hand touched the door. She waited, trying to feel for any more tremors. There were, but they weren’t close enough from what she could gauge. She opened it. The door didn’t sound an alarm. Lucky break. She looked both ways and saw no movement. Without waiting any longer, she took off at a dead sprint. Ahead of her was a six lane road, completely devoid of any traffic. She didn’t feel like getting caught out in the open, so she used those long legs of hers to cross it in seconds, ending up in a sort of backyard of a few other buildings.

Allison was a lot of things. Quick on her feet was one. Fluent in the German language was not. She could barely make out anything in the words, but she knew enough to know about cognates in the language compared to English. As she headed through and across small little streets, she stepped into some kind of office. This wasn’t some kind of business or working office like she had just been in. No, this was more administrative. She got the feeling it was something for some government agency local to the town or possibly a branch from a larger entity. She needed a place to go, though. Somewhere she would be able to contact the base. Somewhere far enough away that she could relocate from quickly enough in order to throw any pursuers off her trail. As she thought, her eyes wandered all around. She had come in through a back door and moved through to the front entrance. She turned on her weapon light and shined it all over the dark interior of the building.

Something caught her eye. A brochure advertising “Veste Coburg” with what looked like old buildings perched on top of battlements. She opened it and thumbed through. While her German might have been terrible, she had learned a lot from her classes and knew what a few words were. Like “Schloss”.

“A castle. Perfect.” She said to herself.

A hilltop castle would be her best bet to get above the terrain and make radio contact. She pulled her rucksack over and dug out her map. A quick few minutes and she was able to pinpoint her location, the castle, and a route to it. Something knocked itself over inside the building. She froze. A chill ran through her as her blood went cold. She broke from the spell and stuffed the brochure and the map back into the rucksack before putting it back onto her shoulders. There was no time for investigating. She knew what she would find, and she would not like it. She took a quick second to peer out the front door. The glass had been shattered long ago, leaving only a metal frame. The wind gusted in, reminding her of just how cold it was getting. It would only get worse later when the sun went down. She hurriedly stepped out and made for the grass. Harder surfaces made for more noise. Noise drew unwanted attention. She stepped as lightly and quickly as she could manage. The good thing was that the mission had her up early in the morning, so there was still a good amount of daylight left, but it was also autumn and that meant shorter days with longer nights. There was no time to waste.

Allison headed west across another street, ducking into the alleyways between shops and behind other buildings. She had to follow the hill up once she got out of town. There was a plaza on the way. That was the big landmark right before the castle. Getting up there was going to take the longest. A sound caused her to stop in her tracks. She stepped up to a wall and looked around. Nothing. Not a single sign of movement. Her head went up. Something was perched on the corner of the roof directly to her left. It looked big. Human-shaped. She could see it in the sun. It leapt over the alley and landed on the corner of the roof that was directly across from her. It stared at her. Her body tensed. The unnatural look in its eyes. The tattered clothes. Infected. No doubt about it. But it was muscular. A strongly built frame. Nothing like the infected she’d fought before. She thought the same about the way it jumped.

She got another demonstration as it pounced right at her. She whipped around the corner and whirled herself in a circle. Her stock went up into her shoulder as she leveled her PDW at where she had just been. The sound of wind. A small crunch. She looked up. It was back on the roof. It jumped across to another roof opposite of her. She fired when it landed, causing it to howl in a very inhuman fashion that made her blood curdle. She fired again. It went for her. She ducked off to the right and watched it smack into the side of the building. She put a few rounds into its head and it swung at her. She stepped back and fired another salvo, repeating until her magazine was half-empty and the creature had stopped showing signs of life. She looked down at it.

“What in the world?” She whispered.

There wasn’t time to stop and perform a scientific analysis though. A sobering thought occurred to her that more might be around. More were always around. They just hadn’t found her yet. She picked up the pace and took off. Now she had to keep her eyes up too. She took the side streets and moved through overgrown patches of grass and trees that flanked the streets. If the roofs weren’t safe, then the trees might be better cover. At the very least, they had give and flex, and rustled when something landed on them. That would give her a better warning if she was being stalked. Still, even in the midst of everything, the autumn brought bright colors to the trees. It would’ve been nice, she thought, to come here and relax. But she was a soldier. What’s more, she was a demi-machina. She was given a very specific purpose in life, and it was up to her and the rest of NATO to earn that peace again. Sometimes she wondered if it’d ever happen in her lifetime, or if she’d die before that time on some battlefield.

Allison took a second to stop and retrieve some important items from her kit. A digital watch, a compass, and her radio. She checked the time. 1126 hours. She had about seven hours of daylight left. She put the compass and radio on her belt and checked her magazine. It was see-through plastic, allowing her to visually inspect roughly how much ammunition she had left. She pulled out her map and checked it, marking her position and the route she had taken in order to keep herself alert and unconfused. Last thing she needed was to get herself lost. There were many other things she carried. Water purification tablets. Assortments of medicine. Bandages. Bug spray. Disinfectant wipes. Firestarters. Everything she needed to survive in the elements, but also things like a signal mirror, chemlight, and a flare to help mark herself for rescue. It was everything that she needed, and she did need a lot of it right now. If she didn’t get help soon, she’d have to dig into her survival ration. And that was a prospect she did not want to come to terms with at the moment.

The gear check was done. She put her pack back on and moved out. Now it was time to head north and skirt the plaza. She had to use the trees to maintain visual cover. She thought about turning around to see if those new machines were still around, but figured she’d get her answer anyway when she got up to the castle. No sooner had that thought crossed her mind that she heard something. An engine. A vehicle was coming right at her. Allison followed that train of thought along its tracks. Wait, but that’s the road up to the castle. Then that means it’s occupied. Friendlies? Survivors? She stayed low and moved to the street that would lead up to Veste Coburg. Sure enough, a small four-door vehicle came into view. She stared at it from behind the brush and noticed it was marked with a strange symbol on the hood. More to that, she noticed that there were men with firearms in the seats as it blew past. That complicated things. Suddenly she put the pieces together, but the bigger picture was still a mystery.

Allison looked back up the road and up at Veste Coburg. Something told her that if she wanted any answers, she’d find them there.