novelraw Chapter 472 - [J] In Your Base, Killing Your Guys
Chapter 472 - [J] In Your Base, Killing Your Guys
A/N: Trigger Warning Of A Mentioned Suicide With Some Details - Also Other Deaths
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Transforming back, trying to remember what to say into the special radio... that feeling of chains worming around in my head intensifies as the thought to warn them hits. I don’t actually care about their lives that much.
Don’t want to take them myself and don’t mind if others do. But I’d love for Chad to fail somehow. Especially if I’m the reason why.
No. Not yet. Get him later. Get him *myself*.
"TOC, Post Three. All secure, over."
I tried to say it a bit bored as we were *instructed*. To sound like we were tired humans out in the cold. But I can tell already that my voice is way too different from the old man’s.
This was never going to work. And I bet the coward listening through my earpiece knew it. Probably laughing his ass off.
"...Roger that. Hey, Miller, do you still need that extra heater over there?"
Yep. He tried to hide it. But that useful prickle of danger hits me hard.
Asshole is playing games, trying to prove I’m not this dude. Like I can’t read the fucking patch that says Alvarez - or the line in his book that said Miller shot himself yesterday.
Which also explained that half-assed stain cleaning on the table there. Smells like a damned swimming pool. And no one bothered to scrape all the brain off the roof.
I toss the radio over into a corner and start to transform again. Kyle is just standing naked mumbling something with his head in the wall.
"...No witnesses... no witnesses... no-"
Yeah. Goddamn nutbag now, this bleeding heart. But he’s right. They’d never seen one of us before. Most humans hadn’t.
We’d been so careful for so long, hiding what we were. Even if the higher ups in society knew we existed.
That was all over now. Chad had made sure of it first thing. To tell us that we can pretty much go wolf-wild as far as he cares.
As long as orders he does give were followed.
"Get moving again you two. They’ll be sounding the alarm and the other teams are infiltrating."
Kyle nodded and let his wolf take over again. Running out the broken door and into the distance. Can’t even maintain control of shit himself for what we’re doing.
Pathetic. To think I was ever friends with someone like that.
Distant sounds of gunfire tell me the real lengthy situation was beginning. One of the rogue squads, probably. Too eager and too sloppy to wait any longer.
With the [Pain Mitigation] and [Healing Factor] on us from the system... those idiots didn’t even care if they got shot full of every clip of ammo in this place. Not that I give a fuck if they want to test how to get killed.
Just won’t find me doing it.
⧖ ☾ ❄ ☽ ⧖
The ammunition depot was as much of a clusterfuck as I expected. Alarms had brought every surviving soldier out of whatever hole in this place they’d been sheltering in.
Gunfire popped and pinged. Small arms. Humans that tried to defend what was left. Of their tiny part of the world. As wolven tooth and claw ended it with blood on the iced concrete.
Nothing could really hurt us for long, unless they got lucky with a headshot. Saw one *loud* ass anti-material round drop Billy before I jumped on that machine-gun mounted vehicle and took the operator out.
There were just... a lot of them compared to us. And they were scared. Scared humans with guns and other explosives did really unpredictable things.
So I just moved through the firefight as I could. Without hesitation. No room for it here.
Dodged a spray of bullets that sparked off the concrete. Took down a soldier who got too close with an unpinned grenade and tossed that shit like a hot potato.
Didn’t think about whether any of them had kids. Loved ones. Didn’t fucking matter.
They were shooting, so I broke them. It made it easier somehow. Than the couple times the last couple days I was told to take out patrols stealthily.
"Artillery units secure. Finish off the survivors so we can load in peace, hm?"
Chad’s voice buzzed like a fly in this earpiece. Arrogant and calm as ever. Easy to be when you aren’t in the fire.
He’d gotten what he wanted. A weapon to point at Vossden. At that tower where she was probably hiding with that Rimecoat bitch and the... the thing she’d birthed in the caves.
A slug clipped my shoulder and *detonated*. The impact actually spun me sideways and I snarled. And barked.
More surprised than anything else, even if it left a stinging crater that already started healing.
Ah. There. A woman in military fatigues, crouched behind an overturned vehicle.
Her hands were shaking as she loaded what looks like a shotgun, but she kept firing at anything close enough to hit anyway. Instead of running.
Brave? Yeah. Stupid, but brave. I closed the distance and had her pinned before she could reload again.
Her helmet flew off somewhere and I could see her face clearer now. Young, dark-haired. With blood trickling from a cut above her eye, where I’d banged it on the undercarriage.
She didn’t beg. Didn’t even look scared. Just stared up at me with pure hatred.
"Fucking monsters."
I crushed her neck before she could say anything else. Maybe not the quickest or cleanest. I actually heard that asphyxiation is one of the worst.
But it was better than what some of the rogues would have done if they’d found her first. I’ve seen that already firsthand.
So it was a mercy. That’s what I told myself as I moved on to the next kill.
⧖ ☾ ❄ ☽ ⧖
The convoy was loading up when I reached it. Trucks full of ammunition, medical supplies, MREs. And on the back of a giant flatbed, secured with chains just like all of us-
"M777 Howitzers. I’d seen them in movies, in news footage from wars happening on the other side of the globe. Never thought I’d actually see one up close. Good work out there."
Chad’s voice came from right behind me. I hadn’t heard him approach or felt the spike of danger. I was too focused on these weapons.
If he never though he’d be near one, I never thought I’d be helping steal them. For a man who wanted to level a fucking city like he was an apocalypse warlord.
I turned slowly. He was in his human form, wearing a heavy winter coat. Not a military one, like I just spent an hour taking off of bloody corpses.
A designer one. Shit that probably cost more than everything human made in the Duskpaw village combined. His phone was even in his hand.
Always that fucking phone. I want to shove it up his-
"We lost three rogues. And two of our old pack. Poor Billy took that round to the head and Edward ate a claymore mine trying to rush into the command post. Few others got caught in a crossfire near the barracks, but it was all acceptable losses."
His tone was so bright and casual. Like he was talking about playing cards and not with people’s lives.
"A few might have gotten away during the confusion, but they won’t make it far in this cold. Not without their supplies."
Chad nodded at nothing while scrolling through something on his screen. Probably the map I caught a glimpse of before. The one all in red lines with tactical markers.
"There were survivors at one of the gatehouses. Two girls. I sent Kyle to deal with it before the others started to waste time. He always did have a soft spot for mercy."
The way he said it made my skin crawl. Made me think about what I did to that shotgunner. Made me think he could tell what I was thinking in the middle of all that chaos.
...But that’s crazy.
He clapped me on the shoulder. Right where that fucking frangible, door breaching round had clipped me. Still tender and raw despite the full healing.
"Get some rest. We move on Vossden soon, remember?"
I stood there in the snow, watching him go toward the lead truck. Catching the artillery on the flatbed sway as the engine rumbled and it shifted out of park. Staring at the rusty spots on dirty snow.
At the fires still going in the compound from the explosions catching canvas alight. And then I thought about the supposed three days left... until he got everything else in place.
Until he pointed and launched those shells. Aiming for the place where the Rimecoat had built their shelter.
Standing there with blood still on my claws and under them. The taste of all this human failure in my mouth. Wondering if they’ll really kill that orange eyed bitch or if she can walk through bombs too.
I started to realize something.
I am one of the monsters. No doubt.
But maybe... I’m also one of the cowards.