Evac

I need pickup. Jaycee park interior, St. Louis/Eastern.

Feilt woke us up before dawn, just in time, too. I stood, shaking the sleep out of my head, and heard the door crash inward. I crouched, grabbed my spike and duckwalked into a hallway.

Feilt, cool as anything, opened the sliding glass door and stepped into the back yard. Jonus, who hasn't seen as much action jumped behind the couch on which he'd been sleeping.

Scanning the room, I saw our entire arsenal, a shotgun, four pistols and a hunting rifle scattered around the room, laying around the areas where we'd been sleeping. Three tall, curvy forms slinked in the door.

My heart started pounding. Plastics are bad news. I heard a voice tell the others to split up and search the house. I backed into a bedroom and gripped my spike so tight my knuckles turned white.

Heels clicked down the faux tile of the hallway. I took off a shoe, laid it on it's side, just barely sticking out from under the bed in the middle of the room, then tucked myself behind the open door.

When it came in, all I could see was perfect, red-gold hair and shapely hips. My eyes started to trail down a pair of perfect legs, but I rained myself in. I wouldn't get another shot at this. It bent down to check under the bed and I sprang.

I brought my spike down, hitting it in the neck, between where the brain stem gets all tangled with the spinal cord. It dropped. It may have been breathing, or just twitching, I didn't have time to check.

I looked from my hiding place, and immediately noticed two of the pistols had gone missing. All else seemed quiet, so I stalked down the hallway. I paused where it opened up into the larger room, preparing to take a quick glance around each corner.

Before I could, I heard a scream. Jonus, his back to me, sidestepped into my path, a gun in each hand. The cry coming from his mouth bespoke valor and terror, each in the highest proportion. The two remaining invaders dove for cover, and it was the first time I'd seen any of their faces up close.

Beautiful. Perfectly sculpted. Soft. And wrong.

Skillfully, they found cover and returned fire. Jonus slammed back into me, hit at least three times, but the tough old bastard didn't go down. Just kept pulling triggers. I backed up, half carrying him. When the firearms only clicked instead of giving their satisfying snaps, he went limp, bleeding out. I dropped him and juked to my left into a new room, one with a window to the back yard. It was possible that they didn't see me.

I crashed through the window, glancing right and left. Fielt lay there, shirtless, two Plastics crouching right over him. They were looking right at me. I bolted, hopping a cinderblock wall, then another, then running through an abandoned house, hopping another wall.

I don't even know if they were following me.

I spent all morning taking roundabout routs, concealing my tracks and taking other precautions.

Jonus is dead, and I'm reasonably sure Feilt has been taken to be harvested. I've got a few cuts from the window, but am otherwise unharmed. Coordinates are marked on the map. I'll be trying to patch myself up.