Malcontent/Part 2

Part 2
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Mal saw the gun and started moving. She hammered him in the face with whatever happened to be in her hand – the beer bottle. The glass didn’t break, but it broke his jaw and sent him stumbling. Without pausing she shattered the bottle against a nearby computer desk and drove the jagged bottle-neck up under his chin.

He let out a wet gasp, more shock than pain. Mal yanked out the bottle with a syrupy thwip and speared him in the face as hard as she could. His right eye was replaced with green-tinted glass. He clawed at it while Mal tried to take the gun, but the strap caught on his shoulder.

She heard gunfire and the sound of shattered glass. Then the impact. Like a punch to her left shoulder, spinning her around and knocking her to the ground. Then the pain. A burn that flooded her nervous system.

She upturned a nearby desk, dropping a decade-old computer to the ground as more gunfire tore up the café.

She grabbed her arm, warmth spilling down under her shirt. She twitched her fingers and found she still move them – that was a good sign.

She crawled toward the back of the café. Boots crunched glass behind her. There were at least three of them, heavily-armed killer in black tactical gear. Shit. She scanned the shop for anything she could use as a weapon but there was nothing. Not even another beer bottle.

She didn’t need it.

The door to the back room exploded open and out came Lunchmeat. No pants but he did have a shotgun.

The blast was like a cannon. The top half of the nearest gunman’s head disappeared, his face now just red mist above his nose.

Lunchmeat cocked the weapon with relish and fired again, taking another gunman off his feet.

"C’mon!" he roared.

Mal didn’t need more encouragement.

She sprinted into the back as more gunfire lit up the café. Paint chips and brick dust went flying. Flat-screen computer monitors shattered all around her.

Lunchmeat fired the shotgun as fast as he could – God that gun was so damn loud inside this cramped space.

She spilled into the back where Julie and Duncan were already on their feet. Lunchmeat stumbled inside, closing the door behind him. “Half a dozen more at least”. He scanned the room, grabbing a handful of shells.

"Who are they?" Duncan asked.

"The hell should I know?"

Mal staggered to the rear window and tried to pry it open, but a bolt of pain reminded her she’d been shot. Lunchmeat moved to her side, slammed the window up with one hand and boosted her through.

She crawled out onto the street. Several passerbys had heard the gunshots and were cautiously trying to glimpse what the hell was happening. Mal watched as a bouncer from a nearby nightclub, a fat man in a red tracksuit with a glowstick wrapped around each wrist, approached Mal, yelling in mile-a-minute Thai.

Mal staggered to her feet. The bouncer went silent when he saw her blood-soaked arm.

He rushed to her side – never saw the gunman coming around the corner. Mal grabbed the bouncer and pulled him close as the gunman opened fire. The first burst tore into the bouncer’s back. Another split his knee and sent him crumbling. As the passerbys shrieked, Mal grabbed the bouncer’s body, buckling under his weight, holding him close as he died.

Not because she cared – he was the only thing keeping the gunfire from killing her.

Duncan tumbled out of the window next, pistol in hand. The corner gunman aimed and fired, but his magazine was empty. Duncan shot him twice in the chest before taking him out with a headshot.

Mal extracted herself from the bloody bag of meat that had been the bouncer. Duncan helped Julie and Lunchmeat through the alley window.

"Awww shit" Julie said.

Mal followed her gaze. An up-armored SUV screeched to a halt at the end of the alley. The doors popped open and spat out four more black-clad tactical goons. Jesus, did they send every fucking assassin in Thailand?

Duncan shouted, “Through here!” and charged through the open doors of the nightclub.

It was chaos inside. Sweaty tourists, off-work cab drivers, and go-go dancers in tassels and booty shorts shoved each other in their efforts to get away from the sounds of gunfire. Mal slammed into a beefy Caucasian man in a Hawaiian shirt. Another jolt of pain brought her to her knees. The man staggered out a "Hey, I’m sorry. I..."

He trailed off as he noticed the blood that was all over her face. So much she could feel it caking on her eye lids.

Gunfire from behind her. She thought it was the gunmen until she heard a familiar shrill cackle and Julie screaming, "Out of the way, fuckers!"

Mal couldn’t tell if it was blood loss or the lighting but her vision had narrowed to a small dot. Duncan threw an arm under her and helped her up. She looked down at her feet, barely able to focus as Duncan lead her through a hallway lit electric pink so bright it seemed to stain her eyes.

Duncan kicked open a door and dragged her through a back room lined with stained couches and curtains. In the far corner, a bald man in sunglasses had a girl on his lap. They both looked terrified.

More gunshots behind them. Mal turned and saw bright flashes as the assassins shot at them. And then more flashes – a bartender in a tube top and hoop earrings had pulled her own gun and was firing at the assassins. The gunfire mixed with the pulsing strobe and deafening bass.

A hand gripped Mal’s neck. She turned, looking for Duncan but was cut off by a muscled Thai man with a black bandana around his face and a Glock in his hand. She didn’t know if he was a killer or another bouncer but her adrenaline was on overdrive and she headbutted him and took his weapon and pounded his face into a sloshy red stew right there on the floor outside the ladies’ room until Julie grabbed her.

Julie’s hair was matted with blood and she was missing three of her teeth. She was laughing.

Lunchmeat sprinted past them and booted open a steel door. Fresh air flooded in. Mal sucked it in greedily and stumbled out into the night.

"They’re not gonna stop, are they?" Duncan said. "They’re gonna keep hunting us, I mean."

Duncan was finishing the suturing on Mal’s arm. She’d been lucky, no loss of sensation. If she could avoid infection, she’d be fine.

Well, not fine. They were all marked for death. But aside from that.

After the carnage at the nightclub, they had stolen a taxi from an old man at gunpoint. They had driven north for an hour before Mal had passed out. When she awoke, it was dawn and they were pulled over outside an abandoned petrol station. Apparently, she had slept through the part where Lunchmeat and Julie had robbed a pharmacy to get more medical supplies.

And clothes. Lunchmeat wore a new pair of joggers. Mal woke up wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a wrapped fist holding a cocktail that read You take the Mai Tai, I’ll take the Muay Thai!

It wasn’t crispy with dried blood so it would do.

"We don’t even know who they are," Julie said. She was using a shard of glass to get a glimpse of her new broken smile.

"I know," Duncan said, threading another needle. "This has government written all over it."

Mal managed a laugh.

"What?" he said, seemingly offended.

"What does that even mean? Which government?"

Duncan shrugged.

Mal didn’t let up. "What government is operating a murder island and hiring a bunch of assassins to shoot up a nightclub?"

"Are you really that naïve?” Duncan said. "The same government that runs false flag operations all over the world. The same government that took down the towers to justify another century of war. That government."

"Nah, this is bigger than that," said Lunchmeat. He was chewing his way through a bag of beef jerky, presumably taken from the pharmacy.

"What’s that mean?" Duncan said.

Lunchmeat pointed a finger at the ceiling. No one said anything, so he wiggled it a little. Like that helped explain anything.

Julie finally had to ask, “The hell are you pointing at?”

"The sky, bitch. I’m pointing at the fucking sky."

Blank looks from the rest of them.

Lunchmeat sighed.

"Aliens."

Julie laughed.

Duncan didn’t. He was seriously considering it.

"Look at the facts, okay?" Lunchmeat said. "You think government has the power to fake all our deaths? To knock us out cold and take us from prison and no one knows? And put that thing in our necks? For what? No, this is like, an alien experiment. We were in a zoo."

Duncan was nodding. Lunchmeat had tapped into his conspiracy-addled brain and was playing all the right notes. Mal had to shut this down before it got out of hand.

"It’s not aliens and it’s not government," she said. "It’s exactly what it looks like. A bunch of rich people with way too much free time, getting off on people killing each other."

"Rich people buy yachts and do coke with hookers," Lunchmeat said. "It’s like you said before, this is some Matrix shit."

"Matrix didn’t have no aliens, though," Julie said, still examining her teeth.

"The fuck you talking about? What’d you think all those mechanical squids were?"

It went on like that. The theories. About the island and Not-a-Lawyer-Martin. He’d paid them all a visit. Asked them all the same question.

And they’d given him the same answer.

No one knew who Martin worked for. The only thing they could agree on was that these people –rich sociopaths or government or alien squids – weren’t going to let them go. The chips in their necks were out, but the four of them were liabilities. Loose ends.

"If we run, we’re never gonna stop running." Duncan arched his back, curled one hand into a fist and palmed it in the other.

Here we go, Mal thought. Another speech.

"I’ve never said I was a good person. I’ve done things. Bad things. And I bet all of you can say the same. But we’ve been given a second chance here. A chance to make this right."

Mal rolled her eyes. "Man, what does that even mean, ‘make this right’ Make what right?"

Duncan’s mouth opened but nothing came out. He probably hadn’t thought that far ahead.

"It means maybe we’re thinking about this all wrong," Julie said. "We made it out. And we have guns. And we have connections, right? They’re the ones who should be afraid."

She flashed a broken bloody smile. "It means maybe we’re the hunters now."