Christopher Ruz's Blog, page 7
September 19, 2013
XCOM: The B-Team, Chapter 9 – Operation Fading Pyre
Book Review: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
September 16, 2013
RUST wins a gold star in the August e-Book Cover Design Awards!
All credit for this win goes to Helen Pinkney, the artist behind the cover of my horror serial Rust. Even so, I'm hella proud.
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If you're not familiar with the e-Book Cover Design Awards, check them out and submit your own work (if you're a self-publisher). The feedback is invaluable.
Thanks for the award, guys!
September 9, 2013
So when I said Olesia #6 was late…
...it won't be late much longer. A complete draft has been sent out to test readers. I'm 95% happy with the story, and think I can bump that up to 100% before the end of the month. So... continued apologies for how I missed my deadline, but we're pretty close.
September 3, 2013
It’s September… so where’s Olesia Anderson #6?
Welp, I'm late.
I really thought I'd have the next Olesia Anderson finished by now. The truth is, it isn't far off - maybe a couple days work left on the first draft, followed by test reader reviews and revisions. But I've gotta be honest. It shouldn't have taken this long. So why the delay?
Too many projects, that's my problem. Rust: Season One ate about two months of my life, and I've also been working hard on Century of Sand 2 (which might just be done by the end of the year. Fingers crossed!) I'm also adding bits and pieces to my two other long-term novel projects, Project Ocho and Killing in America, while also pumping out a short story for a potential collaboration...
In other words, it's the same old story. I took on too much responsibility. I let my ideas get ahead of me. I write too much.
But hey, it's ALMOST DONE. And people who've signed up to my mailing list will be the first to know!
August 27, 2013
XCOM: The B-Team, Chapter 10 – Operation Brutal Scepter
Disclaimer - this is fanfiction based on an ongoing game of XCOM, a turn based strategy game available for PC, PS3 and XBOX360. Everything that happens in these missions happened in my game. This is my real squad, my real B-Team. I invent nothing but the dialogue and external character arcs - I am, in essence, transcribing a videogame as it happens. When a character kills, is injured or dies, it happened in my game. There are no reloads and no cheating. All decisions are final.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4, part 1
Chapter 4, part 2
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7, part 1
Chapter 7, part 2
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
- - -
Chapter 10: Operation Brutal Scepter
The last thing Lewis saw before the Skyranger lifted off was Commander Pournelle standing at attention, snapping a hard salute. Then the back tray closed with a solid thunk of steel, the engines whined petulantly, and they were off. Half a klick into the air already and rising fast, headed for Berlin.
The Skyranger shuddered as it banked through ocean turbulence. Lewis staggered across the pitching craft until he found his seat, strapping himself into the kevlar webbing before he flew off his feet. Major Adam 'Santa' Rudd grinned across the cabin at him. “How do those leaves feel, Major?”
Lewis brushed the little gold oak leaves welded to the collar of his titanium-plate body armour. It still didn't feel real – Pournelle had surprised him with the promotion only an hour before the mission. A quick handshake, a pat on the back, and then a whispered plea - “Don't fuck it up this time.”
He met Rudd's gaze. “Good. I think. How'd it feel for you?”
Rudd shrugged. No mean feat, seeing as how he was weighed down with about half a ton of ablative armour and plasma powered weaponry. “After Lone Mountain, I didn't feel anything. Just glad to be alive.”
“Boy, do I know how that goes.” Lewis set his own rifle across his lap and fiddled with the power core. Stolen alien tech, retrofitted to contour properly to human hands. Would've been real useful two weeks before when they were pulling Mobolaji out of Nigeria, but he supposed the XCOM science team worked to their own schedule. To them, grunts were just chess pieces with heavy armaments. No matter if they lost a few pawns while working up to the endgame, so long as they got there eventually.
He knew he shouldn't let him itch him like it did, but it was impossible not to feel a little... passed over. Cheap. Expendable. Even the oak leaves on his collar didn't help shake it off.
“Hey,” Rudd whispered. “You got something on your mind?”
Lewis nodded. Like it wasn't obvious.
“Shephard?”
Lewis nodded again. Bad decision, letting her run up front. That was the problem with Assault Specialists. They always thought they had to have their nose right in the middle of the action. Lieutenant 'Vandal' Shephard hadn't known when to pull back, when to cut and run. And it'd been his fault for not telling her to get her ass back behind the line.
If he'd been a little quicker, a little louder...
“Hey.” Rudd slapped Lewis's leg. “Chin up. Me and you, we've got four kids in this Skyranger who need us sharp. Doesn't matter if this is just some run of the mill abduction. Vasos and Leybourn over there, they don't know which way is up if we don't tell them.”
Lewis glanced over to the furthest end of the Skyranger, where Squaddies Leybourn and Vasos were sitting, silent, twiddling their thumbs. He'd seen Leybourn in action once before – smart guy, listened well, but had terrible aim and a rookie's nervous jitters. Vasos, on the other hand, he'd never fought with before. A thin woman with a bright smile and a pixie cut dyed neon pink. An Assault Specialist, newly minted plasma rifle across her lap and a heavy laser pistol hanging on her hip. Big eyes, always moving. Taking in every nut and bolt of the Skyranger. Alert. That was good, Lewis thought. It might keep her alive.
The other two – Corporal Paul Bedford and Captain Wendy 'Scarecrow' Gollnick – had serious talent. Hell, Lewis had fought beside Bedford in Lagos. He knew the man could shoot straight. That wasn't what worried him. What gnawed at Lewis's guts was whether Gollnick and Bedford could keep the two newbies in line.
The Skyranger slowed. They were coming into range. That sort of talk would have to wait until they were on the ground.
The abduction site was a petrol station on the outskirts of Berlin. The X-rays abduction patterns were growing increasingly clear – they focused on sites where the population was diverse, but not so crowded that they'd come up against direct opposition in the middle of their operations. Construction sites, lonely highways. A small town cinema. Places where they could sample all humanity had to offer and then vanish into the skies before XCOM arrived.
But not this time.
The Skyranger banked hard left, swooping in to land. Lewis swallowed as his lunch rose up in his stomach. “Hey, Bedford. You ever finish that novel?”
Bedford shrugged. “Turned into a screenplay. Second draft, now.”
“Yeah? That's good, that's good. Gollnick, how's the rabbit?”
Wendy Gollnick was a little more responsive. “Ripleys' good! She's getting real fat.”
“Is that... is that supposed to happen?”
“I guess! Rabbits just do what they want, you know?”
“Yeah, well. You've both got something to go back to.” Lewis met Squaddie Leybourn's eyes. “What about you, Leybourn? Your wife is with XCOM, isn't she?”
Leybourn nodded, eyes wide.
“And you, Vasos?”
The young woman gave a quick, terse nod. Her gloves creaked as she gripped the butt of her plasma rifle tight. “Boyfriend.”
“Think about them when you're out there, and you'll get home okay.” Lewis closed his eyes as the Skyranger touched down. It was never quite smooth enough – the roar of the VTOL engines burning black holes into the macadam, the hard thud as those four feet crunched on gravel. It always made him nauseous. But they were down now, stable, and the back tray was already lowering, revealing a star-speckled slice of Berlin night.
Showtime.
For once, he had a clear view of the engagement zone. They'd landed on the far side, behind the cars still lined up at the pumps. Two hundred meters away was the service station itself, the windows dark. No attendant waited behind the counter. The cars were empty, lights still on, some still vibrating gently as they burned through the last of their tanks. A single corpse lay in the shadow of a petrol pump – a woman, curled in upon herself, her white dress charred by flame.
No sign of the X-rays. Lewis figured they'd be inside, setting up an ambush. That was, if they were still in the area at all. Their pilot had picked out several hotspots as they'd approached, but it was hard to sell whether those were sectoids or humans, hostages or hostiles.
They'd just have to suck it and see.
Major Lewis scanned the empty lot through the scope of his rifle. “Vasos, Leybourn, right! Scarecrow, Bedford, left!”
Rudd was the last to pass him by, slapping Lewis on the shoulder as he ran for the cover of a family sedan. Lewis followed, that same sick feeling still turning over in his stomach. The whole engagement zone felt bad. Cars, cars, petrol pumps, more cars. They might as well have been hiding behind colossal landmines. Why the hell hadn't the pilot put them down on the other side? Advancing across open ground was better than this death-trap...
Movement on the far side of the station. Two huge shapes, hulking headless masses against the Berlin streetlight glare. Lewis knew them immediately.
“Mutons!” he called. “Eleven o'clock, hit 'em, hit 'em!”
Lewis fired from the hip as he ran for the cover of a garbage can. He still wasn't used to the hard kick of their newly developed plasma rifles – his first shot went wide, but the rest of his wild burst struck home. Even from across the petrol station he could see the first of the gorilla-monsters buckling, bleeding across the concrete. Vasos and 'Santa' Rudd were firing as well, but as far as Lewis could see they were only taking chunks out of the tarmac at the X-rays feet.
'Scarecrow' Gollnick and Bedford had set up behind a small sedan. They popped over the hood simultaneously, their faces lit in strobe as they hosed the pair with plasma. The first of the mutons had taken cover behind a Volkswagen, and for a moment Lewis couldn't tell who was shooting where, whether the pair were just firing blind. Steel popped and pinged as the Volkswagen's hood melted beneath the impact.
There was a hissing sound. A high whistle of gas.
The VW exploded.
It wasn't like any explosion Lewis had ever heard. Not like the sudden, bone-cracking thud of a grenade, or even the carefully engineered roar of one of Leybourn's rockets. It was a tectonic thud that turned his bowels to jelly, that rumbled in his molars and slammed the breath from his lungs.
The first muton was taken by the blaze. Just a jittering black shape bathed in flame, screaming, stumbling, falling. Dead.
The second muton turned on the spot, dancing back and forth between the burning VW and the safety of the shadows. It was the best opportunity Lewis could imagine for an easy kill. “Take it down!” he called “Vasos, Rudd, point!”
It was amazing how Major Rudd and Squaddie Vasos had squeezed together into the cover of one small terracotta planter, seeing as how their bulky ablative armour made them both the size of sumo wrestlers. The Major and Vasos shared a look that Lewis knew well – a mutual one, two, three, before they came to their feet.
They fired as one. The sizzle of plasma carried low across the petrol station, and the second muton fell in a spray of blood. “Fuck yeeeeeeeeah!” Vasos cried. If she'd been tense and terrified before, she was drunk on blood and gunfire now. “Suck it! Suck it down! You-”
Lights in the darkness. The flicker of a laser-dot lapping across the asphalt, licking over Vasos's armour. Even from a distance, Lewis knew that light.
He moved on autopilot, finger on the trigger, the rubber socket of the scope pressed hard against his eye. Two quick squeezes, two bursts of light, both dead on target. Plasma splashed across hard steel curves, extrusions of alien alloys.
It floated from the shadows at the back of the petrol station like some oversized metal wasp, humming on jets of thin blue flame, gunbarrel extending from beneath its abdomen, ready to fire. A cyberdisc, one of the colossal X-ray weapons platforms they'd gunned down inside the base near Krakow.
Lewis knew how to handle a disc. Hit it hard, hit it fast. So long as the team kept their sights straight...
A second glimmer of light. The slick sound of steel sliding along perfectly engineered grooves.
Two of the bastards.
Lewis froze. He hadn't planned for two. One was bad enough. He took in the surrounding architecture in an instant, the angles, the cover, the open ground. Fifty meters between himself and the cyberdiscs. Nowhere to hide that wasn't a vehicle or a petrol pump. A field of flammables and high explosives.
They were fucked.
And then, from across the station, came Leybourn's cry: “Heads down, fire in the hole!”
Lewis spun. Squaddie Leybourn was down on one knee, rocket launcher on his shoulder, squinting down the sights. A straight shot, dead into the heart of the two cyberdiscs.
Leybourn squinted, braced, and fired.
The rocket was a point of light slicing the world in two, bottom and top halves separated by a thin trail of flame. It travelled too fast to track – the only record of its passing was the bright scar left on Lewis's vision. And then...
Fire, and heat, and a roar like the earth had split open. The clatter of shattered brick raining down across the street. Lewis blinked, waiting for the smoke to clear.
His heart almost stopped as the two cyberdiscs floated free of the dustcloud, untouched. Leybourn had missed. The rocket had hit the side of the petrol station, blowing out one wall entirely. The roof had collapsed and flaming brick had been scattered across the length of the parking lot, setting off spot fires in the brush lining the road.
Lewis knew Leybourn had only brought one rocket. That was all they allowed the Squaddies. One big boom. One chance.
The two cyberdiscs spun, tracking the rocket as it passed, then settled on their target. It only took a moment for them to settle their laser dots on Lewis's chestplate.
He tried to throw himself aside, but he was carrying too much weight. It didn't matter how many hours he spent in the gym, squatting and lifting and doing sprints. The layers upon layers of armour he wore kept him slow, kept him clumsy.
The first cyberdisc reared back. Light flashed from inside its metallic bowels.
Lewis had been shot before. He'd taken plasma to the chest, grenade shrapnel to the face. He'd had his inside rearranged by concussive blasts.
He'd never been sliced by a wafer-thin beam of heat. For a moment, there was no pain, and he thought madly, desperately, it missed! Then he fell to his knees on the concrete, all his strength bleeding away in the time it took to blink.
A light popped behind his eyes. Then, finally, the pain hit. It was immense, all-enveloping. He screamed so high it came out as a whistle of breath.
He was on fire, he realised. A thin line ran from his right shoulder down to his stomach, a slit barely wide enough to fit his finger. Smoke coiled from the gap. Tiny tongues of flame lapped across his chestplate. He could smell himself cooking from the inside.
The rifle slipped from his fingers and crunched on the concrete. The second cyberdisc was swinging around, unfurling, its cannon extending like a poison barb. Light gleamed deep inside that stinger.
It wasn't fair, he thought. He'd watched Aliens twenty times, but they'd never warned him about this.
The light hit him square between the eyes. After that, there wasn't anything to see.
#
From the far side of the pumps, Captain Wendy 'Scarecrow' Gollnick watched Lewis ignite. There was a brief flash, like iron oxide sprinkled through a bunsen flame. Then he fell, the flame still guttering across his corpse, and Gollnick turned away.
She wanted more than anything just to throw her plasma rifle to the ground and sprint for the safety of the Skyranger, but she knew already that the cyberdiscs would cut her down the moment she stepped into the open. Fifty meters of open ground was fifty meters too far.
Squaddie Vasos was still crouched behind the second set of pumps. Even from such a distance, Gollnick could see the woman was terrified. Her rifle shook in her hands. Her brow was shiny, almost polished with sweat. Her lips fluttered. I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die.
Stay down, Gollnick begged. Stay out of sight. But Vasos wasn't thinking straight. "I don't wanna die!" she shrieked, and jumped to her feet, spraying the cyberdiscs from across the lot. The flash of plasma and the hard thud of recoil sent Gollnick's pulse through the ceiling, and she waited for the two mecha to turn and cut Vasos down.
They didn't. Vasos's aim was true. The nearest of the two discs spat sparks as her plasma hit it broadside, and Gollnick almost cheered as both X-rays backed off. “Got them on the run!” she called. “Bedford, hit it!”
Bedford was hunkered down behind his blue sedan, sniper rifle propped across the bonnet. “I got it!” he called, and fired. A line of laser light split the carpark down the middle, and Gollnick sucked air between her teeth as it missed the nearest cyberdisc by less than a foot.
“I said hit it, you... you dope!” Gollnick settled her rifle atop the petrol pump and sighted. A quick spray of plasma spun the cyberdisc around, but it wasn't enough to put the alien drone down for good. “Support, I need support!”
Squaddie Leybourn was still hunkered down behind a petrol pump, unstrapping the bulky rocket launcher from his shoulder and trading it for his LMG. “I've got you!” he called. “Don't worry, I've got you!”
The LMG roared. Leybourn braced against the recoil, every hard kick sending him skittering backwards on the asphalt. The service station behind the two cyberdiscs erupted in clouds of brick dust and the whine of ricochets sent Gollnick diving for cover.
The barrage ended. The two cyberdiscs floated on, untouched.
“Gollnick, Bedford, find cover!” Major Rudd was shouting from across the station. “Goddamn it, get to-”
Wendy Gollnick was already back-pedalling, stumbling over her feet in an effort to reach cover, but Corporal Bedford was still behind the sedan, his sniper rifle resting on the hood as he tried to line up the perfect shot.
He didn't get the chance.
The cyberdiscs were firing even as they swung around the sedan. Bedford still had his eye glued to the scope when they cut him down – a flare of red, a sudden hiss and pop, and the Corporal slid to the gravel, boneless.
For a moment Gollnick waited for him to scream for help, but then the smoke faded and she saw the damage the beam had done. Bedford wasn't getting up again. No chance.
She fell back behind a concrete pillar, gasping, swearing under her breath. She could smell Bedford cooking. It made her want to vomit. The Skyranger was three hundred meters away, barely a smudge of steel and light beyond the pumps, but at that moment the rear hanger looked like salvation.
“Hit them now! Everything you got!”
It was weird how the Major's voice slammed Gollnick upright. Something about the authority in Rudd's commands. The knowledge of where he'd been, what he'd done. You couldn't refuse when Santa told you to stand. His word was law.
She forgot Bedford, still cooking in the gravel. Her rifle was already humming, hot with plasma. She didn't bother sighting through the scope; her hands knew what to do.
They fired together: Rudd at a full sprint across the open ground, Vasos leaning out from behind the petrol pump she was using for cover, Leybourn plucking a grenade from his belt and tossing it overarm. Three streams of plasma sliced across the lot and met in one tremendous green flash, followed by the crack-bang of Leybourn's grenade.
No mistakes this time. No misses. The first cyberdisc didn't even hit the ground before it exploded, vanishing in a bright nova of shrapnel and fire. The second was limping, jets sputtering as it struggled to regain height. There were holes melted in the robot's flanks large enough to see through. Sparks jumped between ruined circuitry.
For a moment Gollnick thought that the second disc about to drop as well. But segments of steel slid away, exposing more dark hollows, and before she had a chance to reload something unfolded from the bowels of the machine.
A mechanical arm about three foot long, segmented, pneumatic. It clutched something small and round, like an aluminium baseball, and before Gollnick could make sense of what was going on the cyberdisc flung the baseball underarm.
Gollnick watched, mute, as it bounced across the lot and fetched up at the feet of Squaddie Vasos, who was still pressed up against the petrol pump.
The baseball blinked.
Grenade.
There was a sudden flare, brighter than any burst of plasma, even brighter than the sun. The low whump of petrol igniting. For a moment, Vasos vanished, swallowed entirely behind the glare. Then it faded, and what remained was Vasos twisting, twirling in the flames. Almost like she was trying to dance, slapping herself, screaming as fire licked from inside the collar of her armour.
It was a halo around her temples, a bright garland on her brow. Then, mercifully, she fell and went silent.
“No! No no no!” Behind the concrete pillar he was using for cover, Squaddie Leybourn was shaking, eyes wide, clutching his LMG to his chest. “Gotta get out,” he moaned. “Gotta get-”
“Squaddie, stay down!”
But Leybourn was beyond rational thought. He leaped out from behind the pillar and squeezed the trigger. The LMG bucked so much that for a moment it looked like Leybourn was about to lose his grip and drop his weapon on the bitumen. But he kept his grip, and as Gollnick stared, something incredible happened.
Leybourn's aim was dead-centre. The second cyberdisc stuttered in the air, sparks jumping off its metal carapace, the high spang of impact ringing out across the lot.
“Get back!” Gollnick called. Leybourn snapped around, as if finally realising where he was. He leaped away just as the cyberdisc tumbled to earth. It bounced once on the concrete, skidded into a petrol pump, and vanished in a ball of flame as fuel met spark.
Gollnick sprinted across open ground and grabbed Leybourn by the shoulder. “Are you crazy? The whole thing could go up!” But he barely responded. His eyes were glazed by panic. “Come on, we need to move, we need-”
“It's over,” Leybourn whispered. “We got them.”
Gollnick glance back. Rudd was dragging Bedford's limp body towards the Skyranger, but she didn't think it'd make any difference. No more movement in the service station itself. Maybe Leybourn was right, but that didn't mean it was smart to hang around and wait for reinforcements.
She took him by the arm and dragged him towards the Skyranger. “We need to go.”
“But Vasos-”
“We need to go!”
Step by step, inch by inch, the flames leaping higher and higher, she pulled Squaddie Leybourn back to the dropship. Rudd was waiting, down on one knee, rifle up against his shoulder as he scanned what remained of the petrol station.
“All quiet out there,” Rudd said. “You hurt, Gollnick?”
Captain Gollnick patted herself down. There was a chunk the size of a fifty cent piece taken out of her chestplate – a scar left by some shrapnel she hadn't even felt. Other than that, she was intact from head to toe. “Got lucky,” she said.
“I saw Lewis,” Rudd whispered. “He, uh...”
“I know, sir.”
“You want to make the call, Captain?”
“No sir. I wouldn't want to deny you the pleasure.”
There was nothing but defeat in Rudd's eyes. “Wish you weren't so right, Gollnick. I mean... Jesus Christ.” He fell back on his haunches, dragging gloved fingers through his hair. “Jesus. I didn't... I didn't mean for this to happen. You know that, right? This was Lewis's mission. This wasn't my fault. I didn't mess up this time. I didn't-”
Rudd stopped. He touched his earpiece. “Yes, Commander. Yes. Threat neutralised. Yes sir, it... It got messy. I don't know how else to say it. It's all crazy over here, it...”
Gollnick turned away. There were some excuses she didn't want to hear.
- - -
Author's note:
Um. Shit. Shit.
I did the best I could. There were a lot of unlucky misses in this mission, and a lot of unluckier critical hits. The map is a tough one, too. Almost nothing to hide behind that doesn't explode. But in the end, the blame lies with me. I'm the Commander. I got those good men and women killed.
God dammit.
Anyway, if you've enjoyed The B-Team so far and want to support it, why not check out my new horror serial Rust: Season One? It's spooky, it's gory, it's getting good reviews and it's only a couple of bucks. Less than a cup of coffee, where I live!
Take care, everyone!
August 14, 2013
Rust: Episode One free on Kindle!
Welp, it's been a busy few months, but it was all worth it. I've got five episodes of Rust in the bank, and folk are really enjoying it.
With the first season of RUST complete, it's come time to collect episodes one to five in a single volume. The RUST: SEASON ONE collection is now available on Kindle for $3.99, or in paperback for $9.99!
On the other hand, if you've been watching these updates over the past month but haven't given RUST a chance yet, you can now pick up Episode One risk-free! The Kindle edition is free from now until Sunday, so jump over to Amazon and dive into the madness.
So check it out, and enjoy some free horror!
July 28, 2013
30 Second Book Review: Light, by M. John Harrison
Three characters - a serial killer in modern London, a pilot in the far future who has chemically bonded with her stolen ship, and an ex-pilot-turned-drifter addicted to artificial realities - are thrown together in a frantic race to outrun the mysterious creature known as the Shrander, and work to unravel a mystery left atop a lonely asteroid.
That's what the blurb on the back of Light tried to sell me. Shame, because none of that ever happens.
I don't know what to say about Light. The prose is beautiful, bordering on poetic, but the novel itself is largely plotless. Characters meander about, being acted upon by deus ex machina forces until they finally arrive at the novel's largely lacklustre conclusion. Those three characters that I was kind-of-promised would all collide in one super cool space mystery? They never meet. Their plotlines intersect only tangentially, and because of that the book feels like a tease from beginning to end.
In terms of wordplay and worldbuilding, Harrison is a master. In terms of building a compelling story... or hell, even giving his characters something to do... he's a long way from the great authors of science fiction and fantasy.
Maybe Light just wasn't for me. My copy has Neil Gaiman's endorsement on the cover. I think his word counts for more than mine.
- - -
Want to check out some other book reviews of mine? I've got a whole bunch! Alternatively, would you like to know what I thought of the semi-sequel to Light, Nova Swing? The full review is here!
July 18, 2013
XCOM: The B-Team, Chapter 9 – Operation Fading Pyre
Disclaimer - this is fanfiction based on an ongoing game of XCOM, a turn based strategy game available for PC, PS3 and XBOX360. Everything that happens in these missions happened in my game. This is my real squad, my real B-Team. I invent nothing but the dialogue and external character arcs - I am, in essence, transcribing a videogame as it happens. When a character kills, is injured or dies, it happened in my game. There are no reloads and no cheating. All decisions are final.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4, part 1
Chapter 4, part 2
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7, part 1
Chapter 7, part 2
Chapter 8
- - -
Chapter 8: Operation Fading Pyre
“Alive, Captain Lewis.” Commander Pournelle's hands were knotted before him on his desk, veins standing out like blue ropes. “We need her alive and talking.”
Captain Adam 'Devil Dog' Lewis stood rigid, at attention. It was tough for him to maintain the professional facade – he'd never been one for salutes and proper posture, but they'd pinned the medals on his shoulder and now he had to play the part. “Sir.”
“The Skyranger will be waiting for an immediate evac. Get her back here ASAP. The information she has on the X-ray's plans...”
“Vital. I understand, sir.”
“Good.” Pournelle eased back in his chair, sighing. “God knows we don't need another incident. After our last VIP pickup went sour... well. You know how the Council is riding me.”
“No, I don't. Sir.”
Pournelle shrugged. “Pick your team and get it done, Captain.”
Lewis grinned. He already had his list.
#
They landed in Nigeria just after eight PM local time. Benin City looked quiet from the air, which was a good sign. According to CNN, X-rays had swept through Nigeria two weeks before, killing en-masse and scattering refugees east into Cameroon. XCOM hadn't provided support during the invasion, but Lewis had yet to be told why. Suicide mission or not, they could've done some good.
But the wave of violence was over now, with most of Benin City empty. Satellite reports showed scattered X-rays roaming the streets, engaged in small skirmishes with the locals. Most of those battles ended in slaughter. Bodies stacked in alleys.
If they'd asked Lewis to lead a strike team into the city he would've gladly accepted, but Pournelle had given him very strict mission parameters. Thirty clicks from the centre of Benin City was a small dock alongside the Sapele river. Hiding somewhere at the docks was a Nigerian engineer. Ene Mobolaji, a woman who'd witnessed first hand what the X-rays were dumping into the Nigerian water supplies.
She had samples waiting for XCOM's science team. All Lewis had to do was pluck her from her hiding hole and spirit her back to the continental USA. If the streets stayed quiet, they could be in and out without any fuss.
He looked to his team as the Skyranger touched down. Captain Tama 'Ace' Wise, a man who he could trust to be consistently level-headed under fire. Lieutenants 'Vandal' Shephard and 'Bishop' Sullivan, both of whom had the uncanny ability to bounce back from whatever the X-rays threw at them. Corporal Faber, a sniper specialist who'd earned her stripes not on the firing range but under fire. Finally, new Squaddie Evan Leybourn, a rocket-launcher toting guy with a quiet smile and the sort of beard that Captain Lewis could respect. He hadn't seen action yet, but Leybourn had the look about him of a man who'd get shit done, and there was no way to test that except on the battlefield.
Lewis's chosen five. He just had to hope he hadn't chosen wrong.
The back tray hit the ground and the arid Nigerian air rolled in. Lewis looked out at a dark, silent dock. Filthy river water lapped against shipping containers stacked along the water's edge. A few small boats bobbed with the tide sweeping up from the ocean. At the far end of the concrete dock was a two-story building that Lewis assumed was the shipping master's office, every window broken, the walls blackened with plasma fire.
If Mobolaji was alive, she'd be hiding there. A three hundred meter jog. Easy in, easy out, as Rudd always said. Then again, Rudd didn't always bring his soldiers back alive.
No reason not to take every precaution. Lewis motioned for Faber to climb up the nearest shipping container while Leybourn and Sullivan took point. “Watch the shadows,” he whispered. “Fingers off triggers. Don't nail Mobolaji by mistake.”
They moved through the graveyard of shipping crates and rusted steel drums meter by slow meter, checking every corner. The docks were silent but for the creaking of boats against the shore.
Five minutes of careful shuffling later, Lewis hit the wall of the shipping master's office with his team close behind. He waved Faber and Leybourn into position, covering their path back to the Skyranger. “Captain Wise, you and Shephard with me.”
“Gotcha.” Wise motioned Shephard over and together they inched around the back of the red-brick office, peering behind steel drums, waiting for Mobolaji to stick her head out.
Wise lifted the lid off a wooden crate, glanced inside and grunted. “Nothing here. Ene Mobolaji, hide and seek champion 2015.”
“Do you blame her?” Shephard whispered. “Poor woman's being hunted.”
“True enough.” A pause. “So,” Wise said. “You and Huang, eh?”
Shephard scowled. “What about it?”
“Just making conversation. You and that boy look like you're gettin' pretty sweet.”
“Captain Wise,” Lewis mumbled, “that's not appropriate banter-”
“Apologies, but I don't think Vandal's really one for 'appropriate banter',” Wise shot back.
'Vandal' Shephard just shrugged. “Maybe we're getting sweet. Maybe you should shut your mouth. Flip a coin for it.”
“Hah.” Wise stopped. “Wait. You hear that? Coming from-”
Captain Lewis already had his finger on the trigger of his laser rifle when the woman staggered out from behind the brick boathouse and collapsed on to her knees. “Oh thank God,” she sobbed, grabbing at Lewis's legs. “Thank Christ Jesus. I knew you'd come.”
Ene Mobolaji, Lewis presumed. A thin black woman in bluejeans and a leather coat, her boots spattered with paint, brick dust in the black ringlets of her hair. She was wide-eyed, trembling. Lewis suspected she'd been hiding somewhere in the construction site at the far end of the dock before moving up to the shipping master's office.
No matter. They had her now. “You're safe,” Lewis said, lifting Ene to her feet. “We've got a ride waiting. You got the data?”
Ene seemed dazed, and it took her a moment to process what Lewis was saying. Then, in a flash of understanding, she produced a slim white USB stick from her pocket. “The water,” she whispered. “They're poisoning us. Taking over our minds-”
Lewis snatched it out of her hand and buried it in the satchel at his belt. “I need you to hustle, Ms Mobolaji. It's not safe-”
It was as if they'd been waiting for the perfect theatrical cue. Lewis heard the whisper of soft-soled shoes against concrete. The low hum of a plasma rifle spitting heat.
“Heads down!” he called, and fire erupted on all sides.
Lewis hated the hiss of plasma fire more than any other sound. It was the way it burned the air in its path, the superheated trail that left his ears ringing. The noise was worse than the heat, than the sudden punch of impact.
But at least it shone bright enough that he could see where the fuckers were hiding. He counted three thin men keeping to the shadows beyond the shipping crates, their sunglasses reflecting the green flare of their weaponry. Dumbasses were keeping close together. He'd make them regret that little tactic.
“Squaddie!” he called. “Grenade, now!”
Squaddie Leybourn was hunkered behind a wooden shipping pallet, but he snapped to attention at Lewis's cry. “Sir!” he shouted, and threw a grenade overarm. Lewis watched the neat arc as it flew over their steel-drum barricades, bounced off the concrete and pinged off the door of a shipping container, bouncing...
Bouncing straight back towards them.
“Fire in the hole!” Lewis called, and dropped flat as the grenade went off. Ms Mobolaji shrieked as shrapnel rang off the brick. The air above their heads was choked with black smoke, threaded through with plasma fire. “Goddamnit, Squaddie! What sort of throw was that?”
“Sorry, Captain!” Leybourn looked genuinely mortified, hunkered down against the red brick wall. “I didn't-”
“You're goddamn right you didn't!” Lewis unclipped his only grenade from his belt, measured the distance, and pulled the pin.
This time, the aim was perfect. The thin men scattered as the grenade arced in, but not quickly enough. There was a flash, followed by a bubbling scream.
The wind ripping up the river took care of the smoke, and Lewis peered over the lip of his cover long enough to count bodies. Two of the thin bastards down. The third was...
“Down!” Faber called, and Lewis obeyed without thinking. He hit the floor just as Faber's laser line cut the air above his head, and the third thin man – who'd been creeping across the dock to get a better angle of attack – was flipped end over end.
The X-ray hit the concrete, twitched once, and fell still. Lewis exhaled. “Sound off! Ene, you hurt?”
The engineer whimpered, still flat on her stomach. Lewis took her arm and dragged her to her feet; the woman was a dead weight, eyes glazed. Lewis grimaced. If he had to throw Ene over his shoulders and piggy-back her out...
The low slap of footsteps echoed in the distance. Lewis brought his rifle up, scanning the dock through the scopes. All black out there. God forbid XCOM HQ lay down the cash for thermal scopes...
“Shephard,” he hissed. “Take point. Let's get this poor woman home.”
#
Lieutenant Eliza 'Vandal' Shephard didn't really enjoy being the first in line, but shit, she was good at it. Her laser rifle was humming in her hands and her adrenaline was jacked up to eleven. Her breath came fast and quick as she slipped from cover to cover, crouching behind steel barrels and empty wooden crates. She knew they'd give her no real protection from alien plasma, but it went against every instinct to simply walk in the open. Every inch of her body she could hide gave her an advantage.
So when she heard the steady thud of footsteps carrying off the docks, she moved automatically, sliding up against a low brick wall and bringing her rifle up to her shoulder. She made out two figures shifting behind a forklift, and another hiding out on one of the boats tied up beside the dock. Waiting in ambush, she figured.
Arseholes. She motioned Faber into position and held her breath as the sniper specialist lined up her shot. “Easy...”
“You need to relax, Lieutenant.” Corporal Meryl Faber was a picture of calm as she sighted on the nearest thin man. Shephard liked Faber – she didn't fit the typical mould of a combat sniper. They were usually young, brash men who talked a lot of shit back at barracks and then went all silent and serious when it came time to do the job. Faber, on the other hand, never broke character. She smiled when they played pool back at base, she smiled when the Skyranger lifted off and she smiled as she inserted a fresh battery into her rifle.
Shephard didn't know if it was all an act or whether Faber was genuinely happy to be in the firing line. Either way, she appreciated having someone on the team that didn't look like they were walking dead.
Faber squeezed the trigger, and Shephard's pulse quickened as the thin man and the wooden crate behind him burst into flame, the beam passing through flesh as easily as butter.
“Two for two.” Faber grinned. “More coming in. Leybourn, give us some cover!”
Then came the return fire, the whoosh of hot plasma and the chatter of Leybourn's LMG. Shephard kept low, watching the shadows, trying to pick her target. There were more than just the two by the forklift – four, maybe even five of the bastards, flanking from both sides. “Captain!” Shephard called. “Cover, cover!”
Lewis was already by her side, slapping her on the shoulder. “Left side, two on the barge! Move, move!” He fired from the hip, the laser lancing out, slicing one of the thin men through the middle. “Take them down!”
For all Leybourn's wild fire, it didn't look to Shephard like he'd clipped a single one. Just as Lewis had said, two of the thin men were trying to sneak across a barge tied up at the edge of the water, flanking from the left. Sullivan was already charging them, and she had a terrible premonition of Sullivan getting blown away before he reached the edge of the dock.
She sprinted to catch up, rifle bucking against her shoulder as she hosed the barge with laser fire. The two thin men didn't stand a chance. They were still raising their weapons when Shephard cut the first one down, and 'Bishop' Sullivan blew a hole through the second X-ray wide enough to fit a beer can. Shephard panted, grinning, her rifle hot in her hands. “Blew 'em right out of their shoes, huh?”
Sullivan only grimaced. There was soot in his neat moustache and grime worked into the lines of his cheeks. “Shoot the shit later, Shephard. More coming in from-”
Sullivan didn't get a chance to finish his sentence. He was pointing out into the darkness beyond the barge when the world flashed green, and a bolt of plasma slapped him off his feet and threw him to the floor.
“Bishop!” Shephard scrambled after Sullivan, dragging him out of the line of fire. He panted, eyes rolled back, clutching at her hand. “You're okay,” she assured, “You're fine-”
But the hole burned into his chestplate said he wasn't fine. There was blood between Sullivan's teeth, and he spasmed on the floor of the barge like he was having a seizure.
A line of plasma blurred past Shephard's head, close enough that she felt her hair frizzing. She glanced over her shoulder. Three shapes closing in, and there was no good cover on the barge. She'd have to make a run for a wall of wooden debris in the centre of the dock. She'd be protected from the front, but those assholes could flank her no problem of the rest of her team didn't catch up.
Damned either way. She grit her teeth and made her choice.
With plasma whizzing past her head, she leaped off the barge and sprinted across the docks. A burst of green fire splashed at her feet and she dove left, rolling on hard concrete and fetching up against the barricades. Just wooden shipping crates and safety signs piled chest-high – a crude, last ditch attempt by the locals at keeping the X-rays away from the boats.
At that moment, it was all she had. Shephard dropped low behind the wooden barricades, sighting through the gaps between planks of wood. Two of the bastards were coming straight at her. The others must've already split off.
Hemming her in. Her heart thudded in her throat. She needed backup, fast. “I've got no exit! Support, support!”
Shouting was a mistake. Plasma fire roared, and Shephard bit back a scream as the barricade exploded around her. Wood splinters cut her cheeks and ricocheted off her armour. Smoke wended around her head as the remains of the crate ignited.
Shephard swore. Her finger trembled on the trigger of her laser rifle. Four, maybe five X-rays. She'd beaten those odds before. All she had to do was blow a hole through the centre. Scatter them like dogs.
She peeked over the ruin of the crate. Two thin men were coming closer, creeping through the shadows like suited spiders. On the right, coming around the stack of shipping containers, was the third. She couldn't make out others, but she knew they wouldn't be far behind.
Every instinct was telling her to get up and run, to retreat back to whatever dark hole she could crawl into, but she knew that'd only end with her flat on the concrete with a hole blown in her back. Leybourn and Wise were coming up behind her, boots thudding on the cold dock. The thin men were splitting up, spreading out across the docks, taking up better positions. It was going to be an all-out firefight.
No time like the present.
Lieutenant Shephard pushed off the deck with her rifle already spinning up to full power. The battery whined as she drew a bead on the lead thin man and pulled the trigger.
She saw the dot on the X-rays head the moment before his skull exploded. The thin man fell kicking, spraying the dock with brains, but the other was still loping towards her and her battery light was blinking empty. “Cover me,” she called, “cover-”
The roar of Leybourn's LMG echoed off the shipping crates and reverberated in Shephard's chest. A line of sparks stitched across the concrete and up the side of the shipping crates, shattering the windows of an office in the distance. Brick dust rose in great clouds.
The thin man stalked onward, untouched. “Goddamnit!” Shepard hissed, fumbling a fresh battery into her rifle. “Do your fucking jo-”
Green light etched into her retinas. It was like lightning had struck just beside her, the sudden thunderclap lifting her off her feet and throwing her to the floor. She skidded on her back along the dock, gasping for breath but unable to inhale, her lungs hitching, her throat closed.
Smoke wended up from her breastplate. She touched it gingerly, tracing the teacup-sized hole burned through the carapace. “Fuckers shot me,” she whispered. “Fuckers-”
“Lieutenant!”
She glanced up to see Captain Wise charging across the open ground, his rifle flashing. The thin man who'd shot her fell in turn, slumping across the body of his companion. “Vandal, you alright?”
She took a deep breath. Air burned in her chest. “Doing just fine, sir!”
“Sure don't look fine. Stay down, eh?”
“With all due respect...” Shephard levered herself up to one knee, retrieving her rifle with shaking hands. It hurt just to move but damned if she'd let a Kiwi take the glory. A glance left – one of the thin men was coming into her line of sight. She'd dropped the spare battery when she was hit, and yanked another from her belt. “Left side, left side-”
She didn't even see the flash.
Shepard's legs buckled. There was no pain, no thud of impact. Just a tingling in her spine, a sudden loss of balance. The world spun around her as she fell to her hands and knees on the dock.
The air smelled funny. Like the tang of ozone after a lightning strike. She reached around to touch her back and found the armour peeling away like onion skin.
She'd been shot from behind. The other thin man, looping around. She knew she should be angry, knew she should be up on her feet firing, but she couldn't muster the strength. Everything was leaden.
Dimly, distantly, she heard Captain Wise calling her. Vandal, he was shouting. Vandal, get down, get down.
It was a good nickname, she thought. Better than Xeno.
The last of the thin men was running at her, spindly legs pumping, his sunglasses lit with green fire.
With the last of her energy, she raised her rifle, but she couldn't bring it all the way up to her shoulder. What would Huang have done? One long, calm breath, and then he'd put a round through the bastard's head.
Do it. Do it. Her finger tensed on the trigger. If you want to get home, do it. If you want to see him again, do it. Pull!
The thin man fired. The world was filled with light.
#
Corporal Meryl Faber was atop a steel shipping container, drawing a bead on the leftmost X-ray, judging her distance and windage, when she saw the flash. Through her scope she watched in close-up as Lieutenant Shephard took a third bolt of plasma, just above the neckline of her chest armour. It enveloped her, her head wreathed in flame. Then she fell and lay very, very still.
Faber screamed between her teeth, sighted and fired, but her hands shook as she pulled the trigger. Sparks jumped off the concrete, and the thin man ducked away. Then came the barrage of plasma fire, the air sizzling around her, and she dropped flat against the crate with her rifle against her chest. “I'm pinned!”
Below her, Captain Wise was still calling Shephard's name. Then he shouted, “Down, down!” A click, a pop. The wheeze of a smoke grenade spitting thick gas in all directions.
Faber's view of the docks vanished behind the protective smoke. She couldn't see shit, but at least the X-rays wouldn't be able to pick her off. She slammed a fresh magazine into her sniper rifle and rolled off the shipping crate, hitting the concrete with a bone-jarring thud.
She could just make out Wise and Lewis through the haze. “Sir! Is she-”
Wise shook his head.
“And Sullivan?”
“Immobilised but stable. And those arseholes have us from both ends!”
Four on two would be good odds in any other situation, but with Shephard down Faber was starting to doubt. Captain Lewis was scrunched down behind a stack of steel drums, rifle humming in his hands. “I'll cover!” he called, and popped over the lip of the drums long enough to let off a burst of laser fire. But the thin men fired back, plasma flashing from points all across the midnight skyline, and Lewis dropped flat against the concrete as the steel drums rang with the impact. “Goddamnit, I'm pinned!”
“I got you!” Squaddie Leybourn was crouched in the shadows, his rocket launcher up on his shoulder. He was only a couple yards back from Shephard's body but with so much plasma in the air the gulf between himself and the rest of the team might as well have been miles. He pivoted out from his cover and let loose, the launcher spitting flames from both ends.
The rocket spiralled into the distance and exploded in a hail of sparks and shrapnel. Something screamed out there in the black, although whether it was an alien or a stray dog was impossible to tell. Corporal Faber squinted into the smoke and made out two shapes. One tall, loping, pistol spitting flame. The other staggering for safety.
Her sniper rifle wasn't going to do her any good, not with the X-rays close enough to spit on. She pulled her pistol from her belt, a sleek little laser-powered unit with a battery half the size of her sniper rifle – not chunky enough to melt brick, but more than powerful enough to burn a hole through a thin man's skull.
XCOM hadn't put her through two months of non stop snap-fire training for nothing. She sighted on the limping X-ray and pulled the trigger.
The beautiful thing about the laser pistols was how they didn't buck. Zero recoil, perfect accuracy. Just a hole the size of a ten-cent piece bored through the X-ray's skull. The thin man collapsed in a twitching heap. “One down, sir!”
“Keep firing!” Captain Wise peeked out from behind his shipping crate. Faber could see him calculating distances and odds. Then, before Faber could take a breath, he charged into the open.
The final thin man raised his weapon, and Faber found herself unable to breathe as plasma burred past Wise's head. She was sure he'd drop at any moment, flipped end over end by a bolt of energy, but somehow he blurred through the hail of fire and shoved his rifle into the thin man's gut.
The rifle flashed, red light spilling over Captain Wise's armour, and the thin man collapsed in a spray of fluids and sickly green gases. Wise fell back, one hand thrown over his face. “It fucking burns!”
“Get the captain out of there!” Lewis called, and Faber sprinted into the cloud of biogas. It stung her eyes, ached in her throat, but she got a grip on Wise's arm and dragged him back anyway. They collapsed together against one of the shipping crates, panting, wheezing for air.
In the distance, Mobolaji screeched, “Are they dead? Is it safe?” A pause. “Hello?”
Wise was still coughing, tears streaming from his eyes. He swept his rifle back and forth across the docks, aiming blind. “Whatcha think, Faber?” he wheezed. “Is it clear?”
Faber squinted into the shadows. Nothing moved out there, but she didn't think it'd stay that way for long.
She grabbed Wise's hand and hauled him to his feet. “If we hustle-”
“I get it.” Wise thumped his chest. “Leybourn! Get Ms Mobolaji out of that fuckin' box. We're headed home!”
But as Squaddie Leybourn helped their esteemed guest out of her hiding spot and hustled her towards the waiting Skyranger, all Faber could think about was the one that wouldn't be making it.
One more nylon plastic bag. One less soldier.
#
Ene Mobolaji clutched herself throughout the entire flight back to HQ, whispering prayers every time the Skyranger was rocked by turbulence.
Captain Wise tuned her out. He couldn't look away from the black nylon bag secured beside the bulkhead. The way it bounced when the wind tossed the Skyranger sideways.
He wanted to tighten the straps, to keep poor Shephard from being knocked around any more. She was Vandal, he thought. Fuckin' Vandal. She deserved better than a zip-lock bag.
Just like Zelman, and Solomon, and Hickman. They all deserved better.
Mobolaji squeaked as the Skyranger dipped and banked towards XCOM HQ. “Too much,” she whispered. “Too much.”
Wise couldn't bring himself to care. He was all out of empathy.
Ten minutes later, the Skyranger thudded down. Mobolaji was the first off the ramp, scampering past the medic teams with her hands over her mouth, struggling to hold back vomit. Commander Pournelle was waiting by the ramp as well, hands behind his back, one eyebrow raised as Mobolaji ran for the nearest garbage can.
“Captain,” he said. “I received your in-flight report.”
Wise ducked his head. “It was my mistake, sir.”
“Quiet.” Pournelle's teeth were sunk deep into his lower lip “Shephard. Our most talented assault specialist. What the hell were you thinking, putting her in that position?”
“Sir, I accept full responsibility for this, but Vandal isn't... wasn't... one for taking orders. There was a breakdown in communication, and-”
Pournelle's voice was a barely disguised growl. “This isn't the time or place. I want you and Lewis cleaned up and in my office in fifteen.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Goddamnit. Get him out of here!”
Wise spun. Major William Huang was standing in the landing-zone doorway, his black hair combed neatly, his uniform sharp and his eyes wide. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly as the med techs set to carrying Shephard's body-bag down the ramp.
Wise moved to block Huang's path. “Don't.”
But Huang couldn't be slowed. He shoved his way past, and Wise had to grab Huang's arm and haul him back. “You don't want to go there!”
“Is it her?” Huang swallowed over and over. “I heard-”
“Just stand back, man! Stand-”
“Were you there?” Huang's voice rose to a manic pitch. “What happened?”
“Fuckin' breathe, man!”
“Just tell me!”
Captain Wise's shoulders hitched. “I'm sorry, man. I'm so... It got bad.”
Huang stared at his feet. His face was an expressionless mask.
“We couldn't do anything. She went down fighting.”
Huang shook his head. “No.”
“I was right there, uso. It was quick. Not pretty, but quick. Best way it could be.”
His eyes were blank. He wasn't looking at Wise but straight through him, at a point somewhere beyond the walls of the XCOM compound. “No.”
“She's gone, man. She's-”
“Fuck you!” Huang threw Wise's hand away and jumped on to the Skyranger's ramp, where the medical techs were still struggling with the body-bag. He shoved them aside, reaching for the body-bag zip. “Get off her! Get-”
Wise couldn't watch. He turned away, heart rising in his throat, and stamped his way towards the elevator that would take him down to the barracks.
A wail of despair rose behind him. Wise shut his eyes as the elevator doors thudded closed.
For one blessed minute, everything was silent.
- - -
Author's notes: Yeah, this was a tough one. I pumped up the difficulty after the alien base mission, and I'm already seeing the effects. Shephard was my very favourite Assault, but there wasn't anything I could do to help her. She was in cover, but she took three hits in a row. Never stood a chance.
Personally, I blame Squaddie Leybourn.
The reason my XCOM: The B-Team updates have been a little slow is because I've launched a second serial fiction series called RUST. It's a small-town horror story inspired by David Lynch, David Cronenberg, a bit of Stephen King and a dash of Junji Ito.
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I've published four episodes so far, with the fifth and final ep of this season arriving Friday July 26th. If you're interested in a bit of horror/mystery fiction, or just want to support my ongoing efforts to finish writing The B-Team, why not buy episode 1? It's only 99c!
Thanks again for reading!
July 14, 2013
Rust Episode 3 is now available!
The third episode of RUST is now live on Amazon, and wow, things are getting hairy. Kimberly's still trying to escape the town, Fitch is on the run, and Bo is slipping further and further into madness. It won't be long before everything collides...
Amazon reviews for RUST are pretty positive as well!
This is about as perfect an opening to a horror novel as they come, and I for one can't wait to see where Mr. Ruz takes his strange creation. - C.M. Muller
This is my kind of horror story, the kind that's got much more of mystery/thriller aspects than just horror ideas. - Kevin
I'm not usually a horror fan (read:massive wuss), but Rust ep1 seems to have that thriller/mystery twist which keeps throwing me question upon question about what the hell is going on in this town. I get a real Alan Wake meets Last of Us vibe here, so if you're into those sort of experiences, this book will sink its hooks in DEEEEEEP. - Adam
Personally, I couldn't be happier. So if you've yet to give RUST a try, jump in with episode one! It's only 99c on Kindle.
