This is part 3 of an ongoing serial story.  See my Introduction / FAQ for details.

Part 1 (vs. the Tooth Fairy), Segment 3:

The soldier wasn't dead. It was hard to see all of his internal organs with all of his body armor on, but my scan-plusses had everything pretty much where it was supposed to be. The size of his gall bladder was not to be believed. The bones in his hands were another matter. If he lived to see the next few days, it might take as much as a week to put everything back together again so he could use them. Maybe another one to get all of his dexterity back. Probably would hurt like a bastard when his vest's mini-med ran out of painkillers. It was a good thing he was out.

 

“Can you wake the bastard up Doc?” Eddie was still eyeballing the soldier propped up in the folding chair. “I really don't wanna take him home, and this place...” He motioned to the steadily deteriorating fast-food / strip joint we were sitting in. “... Well it doesn't have what I would call good security parameters. Especially now it doesn't have a front wall, thanks to that guy. You think he's alone?”

 

I hadn't the foggiest idea what was going on. The US Army and I had parted years ago. Who knows what they had changed since I got out. I had never heard of them sending anyone out alone, if only because the soldiers wouldn't stand for it.

 

“I don't have any kind of kit on me. They don't let me take supplies from work.” It was mostly true, and I didn't have anything on me that would help this guy anyway. “His armor is probably sloshing him with meds. Probably our best bet is to get that off him.

 

Eddie nodded to The Badger, who has been gazing at the miraculously surviving mirror ball again, while perched on a folding chair that creaked under his weight. The huge man didn't even look away from the ceiling. He just reached over and shucked the man out of his combat armor like someone scooping the meat out of a lobster... one-handed even. All the latches popped at once and soldier slid onto the floor.

 

I was the only one to even attempt to catch him, but I wasn't close enough to grab the poor guy in time. His dented helmet bounced off the floor with a solid clunk. I began to wrestle him into the chair next to the one with his armor in it, when the general firefights outside picked up tempo. Someone fired a rocket.

 

“Looks like his friends arrived. Time to blow... Come on Watts, let's go. I know when we should cut our losses. Leave to goon, follow B. I'll clear the path for ya.” The detective promptly disappeared into whatever virtual space he worked from.

 

 

 

The Badger lurched up from his chair, grabbed his yield sign and started towards the back of the building. He shot me a hungry leer. His black sharpened teeth clashing slightly together. “...and Knowing is half the battle..."

 

* * *

 

It took us nearly an hour to get to where we were going. The Army had gone all out. There were tanks In the street, small VTOLs buzzing the buildings, and a good number of troops caught in firefights with the locals.

 

This time we were the hay in the haystack. The good people of North Prov didn't look kindly on law enforcement types. During the good weeks, sometimes the bodies were even found. The not so good, and the downright bad people of North Prov considered the sudden invasion by the Army to be some sort of challenge their right to bear arms, grenades, and anti-tank rockets.

 

We made it out the back without a whole lot of effort. The few locked doors that stood in our way didn't even phase The Badger. He also didn't seem to care if they were push or pull doors. Push seemed to work for him every time. I'd never met anyone that operated on inertia to such an extent... even as an operational policy.

 

The local alleys were pretty clean if you discounted the stuff that was actually in the locked dumpsters. From what I could smell, most of it had been there for a very long time indeed. The back streets were better, and even sported a few parked cars, so wired with defensive systems that you could see an albedo of electric current over their frames.

 

We didn't encounter many soldiers on this side of the fighting, and the few we did were running away from the locals at a pretty good clip. Everything was pretty chaotic, I'm not sure how much more so than usual. Mostly it sounded like a local holiday than it did an urban pacification, giving me a good clue about who was winning.

 

There was no way I could have remembered our path through the alleys, back streets, storm drains, and sometimes public buildings that The Badger almost literally dragged me though. I would have used the GPS on my phone, but The Badger has almost immediately taken it away from me and eaten it. I assume the Army could trace it somehow, or maybe he was hungry.

 

I wasn't sure how I got here, in any sense of the words, but at least this area was mostly quiet. At some point we had crossed through the front lines and made it back into the areas the Army hadn't landed any troops.

 

The Badger suddenly stopped running and began walk much more slowly, almost slouching his way home now that we were safe(ish).

 

“Where the hell are we now?” I was nearly out of breath. It had been years since I had run that much in a city under fire, and the first time I had ever run away from the US Army In the physical sense.

 

My escort shrugged and stood quietly next to a defunct traffic signal, which for some reason was flashing a purple hand with its middle finger extended. Maybe it was a local “do not cross symbol, but I doubted it. The Badger pressed the pedestrian crossing button a few times, in a way that suggested that the light might work, and that there might be traffic for it to stop.

 

After a minute or two I started to get nervous. Now that we were past the adrenaline moment, The Badger seemed to have lost any sense of urgency, and possibly reality.

 

“There aren't any cars!” I protested. I waved in both directions. “Nothing. Nada. Zero!”

 

The Badger looked nonplussed and pushed the button a few more times.

 

“Nothing you big lummox. No cars.” I waved wildly around us.

 

My escort put down his Yield Sign and suck out his arm into the air above the street. He looked over and waggled his eyebrows at me. Finally, he extended his thumb in the age old symbol of the pedestrian who didn't want to walk no more.

 

“OK, that's just...”

 

I was cut off by the clutch grinding on an Army APC as it rounded the corner, whipped past us and squealed to a halt, all six tires losing traction on the sand covered street.

 

The Badger looked annoyed as the APC backed up, A small machine gun turret on the top tried to track us as the vehicle skidded to a halt on the crosswalk.

 

“All vehicular traffic MUST yield to pedestrians trying to cross at a designated crossing area!” badger muttered loudly. That means YOU!” He lifted his sign and showed it to the turret.

 

Somewhere on the APC a loudspeaker came to life. “OK, you scumbags, drop your guns... hands behind your head and get on the ground... or today's government cheese is going to be Swiss.

 

I looked at The Badger, and he looked at me. If he had a plan, I had no clue. But his grin was not encouraging... in so many ways.

 

“I don't have a gun!” I yelled as I put my hands behind my head. I had no armor, and these guys were probably a might trigger-happy after tonight's events.

 

“I would like some cheese, please.” The Badger yelled with happy excitement. “Cheese. Cheese, yummy yummy cheese.” He began to clap his hands and do a little jig.

 

'Huh?” The guy on the speaker wasn't ready for this tactic, neither was I... The Badger probably didn't even know what was going on.

 

“I want cheese.” The big scary man insisted like a petulant 2 year old as he stopped dancing. He looked at me like he was going to cry. “The man in the can said I could have free government cheese. I like government cheese. Now he won't share. Liar-Liar pants on fire!”

 

There was the muffled sound of a conference inside the APC. The turret drifted off target and pointed at a nearby shop window, making my back stop sweating just a little bit. “There isn't any cheese. It was a thing... something. Wha? Yeah, a descriptive thing to get you to drop your guns. Huh? Representational carrot and stick... no no Carrots... not food at all. Screw it. Why don't you talk to him?”

 

Badger began to cry. It is probably the scariest thing I have ever seen. “But, but, I don't have any guns. So I can't have any Cheese!” He began the wail.

 

The conference continued inside the APC. Several times “Just shoot them!” was forwarded quite loudly. At no point did it interrupt The Badger's crying spree. Finally, the turret rotated back to facing us.

 

“Just promise him some cheese.” I hissed at the tan and brown painted vehicle. “This guy is nuts.”

 

“Ok, ok... ahem. If you give us your guns, or any other weapons you might have... you know machetes, knives, rockets, bombs, stunners, plasma grenades... whatever you got... we'll give you some MRE cheese. We have plenty of that.”

 

The Badger brightened up almost immediately, then began to wail again almost instantly, this time up against the APC. Slamming his hand into it on every sob. It must have been like sitting inside a steel drum being hit with a hammer. The turret couldn't depress close enough to aim at him, so it shifted to point directly at me. My shoulders began to itch.

 

'But I don't have any of those. Eddie won't let me!.” The Badger wailed. “ All I have is this sign!”

 

The Army guy was obviously rattled by the hammering. “Ok, ok, give me any weapon you can get your hands on, ANY KIND, and we'll give you cheese.

 

With a look of intense calculation The Badger grabbed up his sign. “How about this?” he cried as he brought it up in a vicious arc and severed the machine gun from the turret. “Nobody was using it anyway, and cheese is yummy!”

 

 ***

 

As always, this work is (c) 2009 T.J. Whitfield Jr.