Rebels vs. Metro (Part 1)

The shipment of pills had been hijacked.

Acting on a tip, a squad of rogue Metro soldiers had set up a roadside checkpoint and seized 3000 doses of alprazolam from a lone courier, whom they left dead at the wheel of his minivan. After testing out a few of the pills themselves, the young soldiers set up a base in a bombed-out government building near the centre of the City, then sent out two-man patrols to secure the area and advertise their product.

Within a few hours, the Rebels motorcycle club found out that someone was selling drugs in their territory. Six fearsome Rebels rode out into the night on choppers, armed with shotguns and handguns for when they found the unfortunate offender.

Inside the ruined government building, the Metro soldiers stood and sat idly amidst rubble. A few dangled their feet through collapsed areas of the floor. One stood at the ready, holding an M4 rifle tight to his shoulder and squinting into the dark, waiting for customers to arrive.

“I think that’s it for tonight,” he called back to his squad. “Time to move out.”

“Let’s wait a bit longer. It’s still early,” replied a soldier named Shaughnessy, sounding half-asleep.

A gunshot sounded in the distance. Instantly, the Metro soldiers were up and moving, their hands loading and checking their weapons. One moved to look outside through a hole in the wall, then rejoined the group as they squatted and muttered preparations in the dark.

“Single shot.”

“From the north, I think. Maybe two hundred meters.”

“Calibre?”

“Not sure.”

With their M4 rifles drawn, the soldiers started out of the destroyed building. They descended a pile of shattered brick and exposed concrete to ground level, then spread apart as they walked down a grassy incline towards the forest.

Shaughnessy had nearly reached the tree line when a flash of light burst on his back and his body pitched forward into the trees, and he was screaming. Deafening blasts of close-range gunfire erupted from all around, and flashes from muzzles strobed as bullets tore into the Metro soldiers’ flesh and bone, killing three of them instantly.

The two remaining soldiers panicked and fired their M4's wildly, but were cut down by another vicious barrage of shotgun fire. Smoke filled the air as the uniformed bodies fell to the ground, and a group of Rebels, with hot weapons, were laughing.

In the forest, a pair of headlights bounced crazily toward the shooting, leading a screaming engine to war. A battered white stationwagon crashed out of the brush, crunched over bodies and skidded to a stop in the middle of the chaos, and Rebels flung open the doors, spattering blood across dirty paint as they loaded their wounded into the backseat. After a few seconds, the car tore away in a cloud of dust, leaving five dead Metro soldiers in the wake of the ambush.

The station wagon thundered down an empty four-lane highway, passing over the dark neighborhoods of the City. Two wounded Rebels struggled in the back of the car, moaning and cursing, as the engine gunned.

“We’ll be at the Doc’s soon,” said a Rebel named Cole from the front passenger seat. “Who got the stash?”

“I got it,” said a gaunt Rebel from the back of the car, and he held out a black hip bag soaked and dripping with blood. He handed the sopping package over the front seat to Cole, and the Rebel leader took it without a word. Nearly 3000 doses, Cole thought to himself. The score was well worth what the Rebels had paid for it.

***

A man wearing a pale blue suit swiped a paycard through the reader of a Rebel cell phone, and the phone chimed; the transaction was approved. The Rebel holding the phone, dressed in a black T-shirt and dirty jeans, removed a dime bag from a fanny pack on his waist and handed it to the suited man, who felt for the two pills inside the baggie as he took it. Their business complete, both men turned away without speaking.

The drug-dealing Rebel walked slowly down a desolate street, marvelling at how easy it was to move product now that the gang could accept payments from paycards. Ever since the currency collapse, buying and selling dope had been problematic. Barter had become the means of exchange among most people in the City, but it was hard to value certain things: Drugs were priced according to purity, but prices for food, tools and services all hinged on supply and demand. Now that the Rebels had joined the paycard credit system, they could standardize the price of their drugs and clean their transactions through legitimate businesses.

The Rebel headquarters in the City was made up of a dozen houses on a residential block, connected by walkways across the rooftops and tunnels punched through the basement walls. About 150 Rebels lived in the houses and controlled the territory surrounding the base, and their nightly patrols served two purposes: to bring terror to the neighbourhood, and new recruits to the gang.

The black-clad Rebel who had been selling pills on the street was now lounged in a plastic lawn chair in the squalid backyard of the compound. A gang of Rebels stood around nearby, most handling cell phones. A few surrounded a hulking Toyota 4-Runner with its hood open and its doors removed. A heavy machine gun was fixed to a turret on the roof.

Cole stepped into the backyard from inside the red brick house, still invigorated by the brutal ambush he had led against the Metro soldiers. “Listen up,” he barked. A teenaged girl, dressed in a loose T-shirt and shorts, lounged noiselessly in the doorway behind him. “Metro will be looking for us tonight. Who’s on patrol?”

A skinny, sick looking Rebel sitting against the wall raised his eyes, and hand.

“Keep your eyes open for any Metro squads,” said Cole, and his dark eyes were unblinking. “They’ll want revenge for the ones we took out. Ride slow, and call me to check in.”

The sickly Rebel nodded morosely.

The Rebel sentry rode out on his chopper, and soon was scanning the dark houses and empty lots of their neighborhood with weary, depressed eyes. After driving a long straightaway, he eased the bike into a turn and cruised down a short hill into a vast parking lot next to a City park. He rumbled the chopper up to the edge of the grass, keeping an eye on the dark forests surrounding the lot, then braked and cut the engine.

He dismounted and hunched over the motorcycle, and laid a tiny bag of white powder down on the leather seat. He removed a lighter from his pocket and carefully crushed the contents of the bag, looking at the powder intently. Then he opened up the bag and carefully emptied the powder onto the smooth surface of the gas tank, dividing the small pile into two thick lines with his fingernail.

He started to inhale the first line up his nose when an explosion blasted through his chest. The impact of the high-calibre bullet swatted the Rebel’s body away from the chopper, and he belched a gagging sound and a cloud of white dust.

He staggered a few steps to the side, and was bent at the waist when a second shot blew his face apart, spraying a red mist and leaving his skull hanging half-empty. The body collapsed to the ground.

Three Metro soldiers emerged from the forest into the light of the parking lot, their weapons aimed at where the fallen Rebel lay. They moved quickly, in combat formation.

“Clear!” one shouted.

The three soldiers stood around the motorcycle, keeping attuned to the area around them while they studied the disfigured corpse of the Rebel with curiosity.

“He’s definitely from a local chapter. He was out on patrol,” said a dark-haired soldier named Bradstreet.

A grizzled, greying older soldier, Peters, stepped over the blood and bits of flesh near the body, and peered at what was left of the face. “This guy is real skinny,” he said. “They must be low on food.”

“Metro Command will be happy to hear that,” said a female voice softly from a speaker on the uniform of the third soldier, a young Metro rookie named Cox. A small screen had lit up on the chest of Cox’s uniform, and the disembodied voice spoke again:

“Please submit your status report.” it said.

The VirCom, or virtual commander, was now mandatory during all Metro operations. VirCom tracked the soldiers’ vital signs, as well as their intentions, while they were on duty. The VirCom system was the soldiers’ supervisor, and Metro Command made sure that it was always embedded with the lowest-ranking soldier of a unit: this way, VirCom could interrogate the more senior soldiers during a mission, while communicating directly with the rookie soldier, who was less likely to question or disobey orders.

When VirCom was introduced, Peters and Bradstreet, who were older than Cox, had resisted the monitoring, arguing that the system was bound to make mistakes and that their experience and judgement should carry more weight than the decisions of VirCom. Under threat of termination, however, the soldiers had given in to Metro’s demands.

Oppositely, Cox had no problem with being monitored by VirCom. He felt that anyone who refused the monitoring had something that they wanted to hide from Metro. After graduating from the Metro training program, Cox had been fitted with the VirCom system for his first day of patrol on the streets of the City.

“Status?” VirCom asked again, and this time the voice sounded worried.

Cox looked blankly at the other soldiers. Peters sighed, and began to speak. “VirCom, record. At 2300 hrs. 06 minutes, Metro soldiers Peters, Cox and Bradstreet intercepted a known mercenary vehicle, license number -” he glanced at the chopper. “- 25145.” He paused to summarize the events in his head, then spoke again.

“The driver of the vehicle was convicted of suspicion during our approach, at which time we eliminated him with pre-emptive defensive measures.”

Peters looked to Bradstreet, who nodded in approval.

“Thank you, Sergeant Peters.” VirCom said in a sultry voice. “Your report has been received. Stand by for new orders.”

This is an excerpt from Rebels vs. Metro.