Red Twilight: A Dawning Of Power

Chapter 15: Medal of Honor

El and Lacerti duck and jump the maze of walls until at last there is only one path left to follow. When the commotion finally stops, El slaps Lacerti on the arm and smiles appreciatively. The old partners go "dungeon happy" as they make their way down the halls armed and ready for action. "Lacerti, what sort of shit do you think we're in this time?" Lacerti gives a look of severity. El nods. "That's what I think, too."

The hall grows dark and vines begin to drop from the ceiling, creating a thick jumble to push through. A strange sense of familiarity follows. A hand stretches out at El. It is gloved, and a masked face comes into view next. It is a gas suit. It makes a groaning sound as it reaches to squeeze the life out of El. El grabs the hand, pivots around the soldier, throws it over his knee, then elbows it, snapping its spine. The soldier lets out a high-pitched scream, and ten more masked men reach out, seemingly from the walls.

"Lacerti!" El calls, but there is no answer. He swoops down and steals the Red9 off the belt of the soldier he just dropped, then he spins around to find himself surrounded. El shoots the nearest soldier in the knee and then round kicks it away. He twists around to find another at point-blank range, so he pistol-wh.i.p.s the adversary and adds a backhand to make it stumble. He blasts it in the head as it falls, only to find three more walking up to take its place. "You're like roaches; you're everywhere." El can clearly see now that his fancy karate moves and the sixteen bullets he has between his guns won't be enough to fight this acc.u.mulation.

El picks a direction and runs for it. He smashes his way through two men while making his break. The vines thin, and he finds himself outdoors. He is outside a farm community at dusk. There is a fire tower and two silos, three barns, and six farmhouses. Past that lies a seemingly endless rice field. Behind him, the now dozen apelike soldiers march out of the jungle.

El's heart sinks. He knows where he is now. Feelings better left forgotten flood into him; faces from a dead life fill his mind. Fear, hate, disarray—things a soldier learns to ignore come to remind him of his own humanity. The first and most significant memories are of his own men and of his commander, Edward Reeves.

El couldn't imagine for the life of him why a man like Reeves would join the armed forces. Clever, educated, and analytical, he was a mathematical theologian. El recalls a dozen times when he found himself whispering with Reeves about formula and rhythm. "Everything is a pattern," Reeves would say. "If you could find all the patterns in the world, nothing would be able hurt you." The concept fascinated him to no end.

"In the theological world, we find everything is made of numbers and variables. Isolation problem solving—this is the world we live in." El would always find Reeves and his puzzles captivating.

"Here is how mathematical theory works. Imagine two brothers, Elroy and Lee. They work together in a commerce kitchen. Elroy is a dishwasher, Lee a busboy. Every hour an identical load of dishes arrives for them to clean and sort. Elroy follows a pattern without fail; twice a minute, he places up a coffee cup out to be sorted. After ten cups he washes a plate, and every other plate he sets out a tray. With every other tray he cleans a pan, and seven times a day he is given a soup bowl to clean. Lee moves in harmony, sorting each dish as it is put up. The pattern is flawless. Due to each man's focus, they only see each other before and after their shifts. One day several hours into a shift, Elroy looks up from his work momentarily and sees on the drying table ninety-one cups, eight plates, four serving trays, two skillet pans, and one soup bowl. How long ago did Lee abandon his post?"

The answer leapt out at El, and that was the beginning a new passion. "Fifty-two and a half minutes," El recalls. "The bowl is an anomaly, the zero number. That's why there was an odd number of cups."

El shakes himself back into the now.

El dashes for the town, and as he runs, a woman with a cart full of manure drops her cart and shouts in a strange language. Suddenly a dozen more men come into sight and start to chase El. "This is simply unacceptable," he mutters.

El leaps through the window of one of the barns like Superman and rolls to his feet. A man with a pitchfork lunges at El and pins his left hand to the wall between the spokes. The man draws a cleaver from his belt and, holding it over his head, sprints to finish the job. El leans out of the way, and the knife gets buried in the wood. The bald veteran swings out his free hand and knocks his aggressor off his feet with a solid swing. He pulls the trident out of the wall just as some of the pursuing men come in through the broken window.

El rushes to open the door to the barn to escape, but a scythe cleaves the door inward when a woman swings it at him. El shoulders past her as trains of enemies form behind El while he rushes through town. He thinks to himself, The silo, picking his next safe haven. So far this all seems frightfully familiar to him. Within the silo there is only one entrance to the upper floors, a ladder propped against the wall. El flies up the ladder.

At the top a dead soldier lies clutching to his combat knife. El takes the weapon from him as the crazed townsfolk pursue him. The first up is a man in a hemp hat and patchy overalls with a hoe. El kicks him back down the ladder, but he barely looks stunned by the fall. El tips the ladder over as four more begin to climb. They shout at El in their alien tongue. The American stands at the edge with his newly acquired Red9 and begins sniping them. His plan for dealing with the townsmen seems to work fine as he executes two flawlessly.

El's moment of victory is cut short, though, when the ape-men catch up and pull handguns as well. The ape-men are good shots—better than El would have given them credit for. The first shot splinters the wood just over El's head. El leaps to one side, diving behind a water bale. The monsters prop up the ladder again so they can climb to their victim.

From a crouched position, El runs across the loft to the third floor steps. Four more bullets fly and are deflected by the infrastructure. On the third floor, El piles up some wheat bags and awaits his pursuers. As they start up the steps, El pops up and fires three times at them, killing two and wounding one. The ape-men blast at the barricade.

Noticing he is losing ground fast, El makes a break for the window.

The man springs through, crouched into a ball, and he glides gracefully out of the silo and into a second-floor window of a house across the way. He rolls to his feet and is met with the largest, most powerful looking man in the village—a six-foot-six man in a checkered shirt with a bag over his head, like the monster in some slasher movie. The large foe swings a hand axe at El, who ducks in time, but the man in the mask catches El with a jab.

El grunts as he stumbles back and falls onto the bed in the room. The masked man swings his axe down at El, but he leans to one side and the man's momentum carries him onto the bed as well. El rolls him over and wh.i.p.s out the combat knife. The masked man grabs El's arm, and the titans engage in a power struggle. The masked man has the power—he outweighs El by likely fifty or more pounds, but El has the experience. The masked man is young and doesn't know how to pick his punches.

El is thrown onto the ground as the men wrestle with one another. He allows his arms to get pinned. The masked man struggles to raise one hand to swing with his axe again, but El makes his attack, swinging his knee up into the masked man's groin. He falls forward and El knees him again, smashing him through the handrail and toppling him down the steps.

El leaps down the steps in chase. The masked man has just found his feet by the time El is point blank with him, nose to nose as El plunges his combat knife into the Vietnamese man's gut. The masked man gasps as blood starts running freely out his mouth and he slowly stumbles backward. El pulls his combat knife out of the man's stomach and slits his throat with it.

Suddenly there's a pounding at the door and the smashing of windows to both sides, and El feels he must think fast. With enemies on all sides, it is only a matter of time before he is overrun. He looks left—nothing—and he looks right, finding nothing as well. Behind him, a door, likely a storm shelter.

It's the Alamo, the last great chance for any gunfighter. It will be an uphill battle, which is bad, but it will be a narrow walkway through which they will have to fight him one on one and in an extended battle. Where one decides to fight plays a tremendous role in the outcome.

El swings open the cellar door and hustles down the steps. It is exactly what he thought, a stone chamber with two ninety-degree angles in it—one at top, the other at the bottom, no windows, and only one door.…

***

Lacerti continues to watch in confusion. Several minutes ago, El seemed to just buckle over. He kneels in the dark hallway and snaps at him numerous times, but to no avail. Then he slaps him once, getting no reaction. "Hmm," he grunts.

Down the hall, he hears Trash scream, "Freak, stay away from her!" Lacerti knows exactly what he needs to do. He lifts El onto his back and swiftly runs through the labyrinth with exceptional speed and proficiency.

"Looks like it is hero time again." Lacerti smiles

***

In a mess of organized chaos, the possessed townsmen and ape-men make their way into El's trap. His knife in one hand and his Red9 in the other, El hides around the second corner as the first townsman reaches the bottom. El smashes the man's nose with his elbow, turns the corner, and cuts the throat of a second. By the time the Vietnamese have figured out what has just happened, El has brought up the Red9 and started unloading on the next three.

The ape-men do El a favor by starting to discharge their weapons into their own people trying to reach El even while El locks knives with the townsmen. In this way they kill easily half their allies in a fruitless spray of bullets.

El was counting on all of them carrying Red9s like the one he found for this reason precisely. He remembered that the Red9 is a low-caliber handgun that was carried by naval officers in World War I and that its bullets would not pass through the human body under normal conditions. His plan of being able to hide behind a wall of his own enemies seems to have worked. El picks up a wounded townsman and charges up the steps using him as his shield. The ape-men waste their precious bullets firing upon the living shield. Once in close range, El's glory as a fighter shines through—a duck, a spin, a roll, and some calculated knife swings and he has the hapless ape-men fighting each other in the stairwell as they grope for their enemy.

As it comes to the last of the soldiers, they finally reorganize and retreat from the "would-be warlord." They had the numbers, but numbers don't win wars these days. El looks to the ground to count the bullet casings. Two hundred and seventeen. There's not a bullet left between them. El raises his head tauntingly. No one runs from El unless he wants them to, and he can see no reason to let these ones go.…

El's nightmare begins to fade away. Early in the war, on December 19th, 1968 at 5:45 AM, El and his men had made the decision to attack a nonmilitary target, a direct violation of their orders to avoid contact with civilians. El believed that they had been set up, and his first objective was to escort his men back to friendly soil. Seeing that he had no transportation and no radio, they would have to access a domestic channel, which meant marching into a town and making empty threats and ideal promises in spite of having inadequate resources to back up those words. To unarmed citizens, fifty-three soldiers with guns should have looked too imposing a force to contest. Even though El was worried, he knew that his troops were not combat ready, and any reasonable amount of resistance would have proven a threat to his team.

At 8:00 AM the town seemed accommodating to them. For some unknown reason, the townspeople were sympathetic to their needs and purpose. They where hidden away in a community of underground shelters, and their interpreters where permitted to use the phone lines.

After the war on their return home, El and Lacerti's units became amongst the most decorated to leave Vietnam—Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Stars, Purple Hearts, and The Joint Service Commendation Medal were all awarded to nearly everyone. And as for El and Lacerti, they also returned home to the Medal of Honor with cl.u.s.ters.

***

When at last El awakes, he slaps Lacerti on the arm to alert him of his condition. Lacerti places El on the ground and they run together. In a matter of moments, seemingly all can hear the music box tune. Then they run into a dead end. Lacerti looks down at El for advice. El rubs the wall and looks to Lacerti. "Two-and-a-quarter-feet of sandstone." He steps to one side. "Break it," El states simply, waving to the wall. Lacerti lowers his shoulder and runs at the wall, which shatters apart under Lacerti's weight.

Trash and Ashley both lie atop the merry-go-round. El and Lacerti step into the room cautiously. Crow in his divine form drops from the ceiling without warning like a devil bat. He takes El by the head and launches him across the room into another wall, cracking the wall to pebbles. Lacerti spins to face the adversary. Crow swings one arm back smashing Lacerti along the jaw, and Lacerti falls over, twisting.

Crow flips down off the ceiling and leers at them with a grin. "If you want to run, now is the time," he taunts. Lacerti kick flips to his feet, landing with a mighty thump and shaking the room under his tremendous build. The titan points his gun-blades at Crow and fires relentlessly.

Crow glides up the walls and around the room. Black ripples of power emanate from within him, the lead passing through him as if he were mist. With dizzying speed, he flies at Lacerti's c.h.e.s.t and fires a beam of lightning through the man. El staggers to his feet covered in dust and rubble and reaches for his Jackal. Crow divides his attention and with one hand triangulates the lightning beam between the two.

El is dragged into the air by Crow's godlike powers. Lacerti summons a stoic might, walking toward Crow in spite of the burning sensation of the magical attack. He brings down both hands as a hammer and clobbers Crow. Shocked by the idea that a mortal can even touch him, Crow laughs for a moment. He spits up some blood and rises to his feet as he suddenly understands the truth of Lacerti's heritage.

"A Tamriel," Crow hops back, hovering out of Lacerti's reach as he attempts to hit him again. "And here I had the folly to think I might be the only one of our kind on the godforsaken rock." Crow holds his arms out and a red sphere glow around him. El and Lacerti both make to run at the warlock.

"I'm curious, how far developed is your power?" the evil man asks. El stops dead in his tracks as the expanding wall of energy hits Lacerti's arm and instantly scorches it black. "Enough so to fight me, perhaps?" Lacerti stumbles away, cradling his arm.

El points at a large rock. "Lacerti!"

Lacerti nods. El runs around the diameter of the room to the girls. Lacerti lifts the indicated boulder and flings it at Crow, who is forced to drop his spell as the rock hurls toward him. The rock splinters as a reaper boomerangs into Crow's hands and he cuts it to pieces. Crow chuckles, lowering his eyes to his worthy enemies. As his eyes close, he vanishes, and a flock of ravens takes his place and scatters in a mocking cry.

The battered duo picks up the girls and the merry-go-round melts to dust, just as El's nightmare had, and Trash's before him. A troublesome idea presents itself to El. That demon could have killed all of us easily, but it instead is playing with us, holding us by our tails and letting us believe we can get away, as a fiendish cat might. What is he? What power does he hold? And how the hell can we escape unless it's by his will? Lacerti and I are exceptional fighters, but with the exception of one lucky punch, we couldn't touch him.

***

Crow retires to the portal room at the base of the shrine. He draws a conjurer's seal on the ground, summoning nine spheres of energy. A gray light bathes the room as lighting hops from sphere to sphere. Within the center of the circle appears a Middle-Eastern-looking man in a deep blue traveler's robe made of silk and with the image of the Kirin on the back. His hair is tied in a bun on the right side of his head. As he overcomes summoning sickness, he locks eyes with Crow. "Fiend! I command you, why do you summon me?"

Crow raises his head and grins devilishly. "Job the Endless, forsaken by the slave's god, condemned to my servitude and by endless hunger, hear the voice of your savior."

Job snaps at Crow vengefully. "Damned servant of the dead gods, free me from my suffering that I my take my rightful place at God's right hand with my brethren. My beloved awaits me in eternal death."

Crow growls furiously and waves one hand at his defiant servant, whipping him with psionic energy. "Slave! Do my bidding, for only through me shall you ever know peace, if only for a moment!"

Job falls over, holding the sides of his head. "Come, my sheep," Crow says as he holds his hand down in a fatherly fashion, "for I am the way."

Job takes Crow's hand and is led up to his feet. The pain from the psionic assault stops instantly. Job lowers his head in defeat. It was foolish of him to disobey his lord's will, and he is blessed that his punishment was so mild. Job knows well what he will be commanded to do, and however painful it is to do so, if he should not perform for him, his lord's wrath will be eternal. More so, it will be without pity this time.