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Stories from the Verse
Con Verse Lea
Chapter 4: Beam 119
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 60
“Excuse me, my good man, I wanted to make a withdrawal.”
Beam was walking toward the guard on what he took to be the front door of a warehouse-sized fortified building. He had drawn his forty-five caliber revolver but was holding it casually, not threateningly. The man he approached had a rifle on a strap over one shoulder and two different swords on his belt. He also wore what was obviously protective gear, what was probably a bulletproof vest with an apron and leggings, and incongruously a motorcycle helmet.
If he had expected a casual response from the man, he was disappointed. As soon as he spoke, the guard moved his rifle to ready position aimed directly at him. Beam was unfazed, and continued to approach at the same casual rate. But he said, “Dawn, plan B.”
The first of two shots caught the man’s unprotected right bicep, causing the rifle to lose its aim. It still fired into the air before Dawn’s second bullet found the opening in the helmet for the face, and the soldier was knocked backward into the door and collapsed on the ground.
This would of course mean doing it the hard way. He tried the door, but it was, as expected, locked. He could search the body for a key, but there might not be one, and anyway he expected that in a moment someone from the inside would open the door to come out. He readied his pistol, and was rewarded with the face of a man wearing a similar vest but only something like a hardhat. He also had a rifle over his shoulder, but it was the longer of his two swords which he had in his hand. Beam discharged the pistol into the man’s surprised face, and as he fell he shot him again for insurance.
Dawn and Bron had by now reached his position, and he let the girl lead the way into the building. He and Bron would be more of a redundant rear guard as she carved her way past whatever was coming. They kept busy as well, though. In the first room they entered, Bron’s shotgun killed a man and slowed two others, and Beam used two more bullets on the far door before Dawn had the room cleared of its six other occupants. Beam reloaded his four spent slugs as he heard Bron cock the shotgun. There was still work ahead.
It took about twenty minutes, but soon Beam was satisfied that there were no living guards remaining. Only two others had been as fully outfitted as the one on the front door, and they appeared to be the bosses. It was time to find out what they had.
It wasn’t too difficult to pry open the metal cases. Beam wondered whether it would be cash or jewels or exactly what would be kept in such a fortified and guarded building.
He was quite disappointed. All he found was--.
“Rice?” he said. “Who fills a fortified building with rice? It’s not as if it looks like a famine out there--a reasonably lush forest, they’ve obviously got ample water and good soil, they can grow food.” He stared at their find.
Giving Turbirb’durpa time to gorge himself on the brains of the dead men, he spent another ten minutes checking for any sign that there was anything else here, anything of actual value. Then he said, “We’d better get out of here. We don’t know that they didn’t sound an alarm, or that no one else is coming. Let’s follow the road out of here about half a mile so we’re not so easy to track, then take to the trees and find a place well away from the road to camp for the night.”
He led the way back to their entrance and up the road.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #460: Versers Reorganize. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
