The 75th Ranger Regiment
Pfft. Pfft.
The distinctive gunfire concentrated on a building to our left. Judging by the cultists who dropped mid-charge with a soft thud, whoever was shooting seemed to be covering us. If they had been aiming at us, they would already have demonstrated the skill to put rounds through our heads and chests the same way they were dropping the enemy.
“The 75th?”
“Probably. For now—focus on the fight… ugh!”
“They killed the Pastor! The Pastor!!! You heretics! Uwaaaaaah!!!”
Tadatadatada…
Suppressing fire poured from the hotel across the street. We dropped low and threw ourselves behind the next piece of cover.
“Die, di—”
Thududud. Thudud.
The wild automatic fire cut off awkwardly under another volley—this one much closer.
“Friendlies! Watch your fire!”
A man’s rough voice barked the warning as a figure in winter combat fatigues sprinted toward us. His gas mask was cracked and sealed with crude tape. Silver duct tape wound around tears in the uniform. But the body armor and magazine pouches were real, as were the elbow and knee pads. The shortened carbine carried a suppressor, optics, and a foregrip. And hanging from his helmet was something you almost never saw anymore—a four-tube night-vision goggle.
No doubt about it. A Spearhead operator.
“You people—”
“F01.”
James spoke up first. The soldier stared at us blankly for a second, then broke into a grin.
“…Goddamn. You actually came. Never thought you really would!”
“Who the hell else would risk their lives coming in here!?”
“Some unlucky idiots? Haha. Anyway—thanks. Really. Means a hell of a lot.”
Pfft. Pfft.
“The building! They’re shooting from the second floor! Kill them!!!”
When the suppressing fire shifted, the man leaned out just enough to squeeze the trigger twice.
“Aagh!”
“Behind the truck—more of them!”
The cultists no longer seemed interested in closing to melee; they simply sprayed bullets. But their numbers had clearly thinned—or maybe their ammo had. The impacts hammering the cars were growing fewer and farther between.
“You’re the 7—”
“Seventy-fifth Regiment. Rangers.”
“…Seventy-fifth what?”
“Rangers! Rangers Lead the Way! Never heard of us?”
James’s reaction was not the “never heard of it” variety. He simply froze, stunned—much like Angela, who was still trembling behind the car.
Rangers? The name rang a distant bell. Maybe they skipped introducing themselves as Spearhead because both sides already knew the other was military.
“…The big red ‘One.’”
James finally found his voice, referencing the mark I had engraved on the rifle.
“First Infantry Division?”
The other man caught it immediately. Laughing, he offered a handshake even in the middle of a firefight.
“I was in the Gulf.”
“No shit? Then you know the score. I wasn’t there myself, but—whoa!”
Ping. Ping.
Rounds skipped off the steel plate. Then the suppressed shots from above went silent.
The voice of the sniper who had been covering us crackled from the radio clipped to the man called Carlos.
“Ah… this is my last mag too.”
Carlos carefully poked his head out, then looked back at us.
“You folks still got rounds?”
I rattled the bandolier across my chest and set the shell carrier from my belt on the ground. Roughly half the slugs I had stayed up nights making were still left. Worth the lost sleep.
“…Whoa. These people—shotguns and shells are all handmade, huh.”
James lifted his head the moment the transmission came through. Full darkness had swallowed everything by now. Only the torches painted the surroundings in thin, flickering light.
“I can barely hear their footsteps.”
Was this James’s first real encounter with the Rebirth Church? …Probably. We had all been together when we took down that Hammerhead, so maybe not quite.
“Whatever these bastards eat, their footsteps are damn near silent indoors. Fucking ninja assholes.”
“Like SEALs?”
“At least SEALs splash around. Watch those flippers slap-slap and these cultists start looking more special-ops than the real thing. But…”
Carlos slung his rifle, drew a pistol and a combat knife from his belt, then flipped the night-vision goggles down with one hand.
“They’re a little weaker at night.”
No—they were still stronger than ordinary people after dark. They had decent night vision by default. But they were nowhere near elite soldiers wearing NODs that turned night into day.
“I’m looping right. Trust me and keep light off the right side as much as you can. I’ll cut from right across the center to the left. Got it?”
“Good.”
“Watch your friendly fire. You already know, but still.”
He clapped James on the shoulder, unclipped the radio from his own, and handed it to me.
“Call will feed you approach directions from above. Name’s Call.”
He’d managed to find working gear even in this mess. I took it carefully, then turned from the departing Carlos to check the rest of us.
James edged out of cover just enough to keep his muzzle forward. And then—
“Uh… uuh. Uuuuh.”
Angela sat crumpled, clutching her gun as if it were the only thing holding her together. When I carefully gripped her shoulder, she flinched hard enough to shake.
I understood. That didn’t stop the tight, helpless feeling in my chest.
“You said you wanted to save people. Without even this much resolve?”
“…Hic… hhk… huuh…”
“Crying doesn’t help, Angela.”
“You heard that?”
“…Ha… haah.”
“If you want to save someone, you have to be ready to take someone else’s life—”
“How… how can a person do that to another person?”
“Don’t you think you’re asking that a little late?”
“Hanging people, killing them like that… why? For what? If it was because they were no longer useful, or because there was no hope of treatment and they were putting them out of their misery—I could at least understand that…!”
Painfully, stubbornly good. Lucky, in a way, that the Zeroth Reich had found her first. Luckier still that Hans had kept her under his own management so she survived.
“Angela—”
“If I’d known it would be like this… if I’d known there were so many people this monstrous… not even to survive, but as offerings, offerings—this kind of baseless malice…”
“Angela Dietrich!!”
I seized both her arms and shook her hard. Our foreheads cracked together with a clear metallic ring.
“You think malice needs a reason? Right now, while those things are coming to kill us?”
“Hyunwoo! What are you doing!”
“Being scared is fine. But even now, when we’re trying to save people, you don’t get to drag us down like this—”
“Damn it, leave the bitch and come on!”
Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.
Gunfire already cracked from the right. There was nothing more I could do for her.
Still, she was someone I could not afford to lose. I simply took position near her.
Crash.
A brutal scuffle erupted on the right. Footsteps multiplied from the left and the center.
…
Then, for a single heartbeat, absolute silence fell.
…
In that instant James flattened himself against the ground, shoved his muzzle into the gap under the car, and—
BOOM.
“—Aaaaagh!!!”
The blast of the shot made the footsteps explode in every direction. I moved toward the sound and put a round into a black-robed New Skin the second before it could leap.
BOOM. Boom.
Three of the eight vanished. One shell left in my gun. One round left in James’s.
Bang.
I dropped the one vaulting the hood, then immediately swung the empty shotgun behind me like a club.
Crack.
“Guh?!”
The startled cultist flailed and went down—but impact slammed into my back.
“Khuh!”
“Die, heretic!!”
A knife rose high behind me, ready to drive down. I locked both arms against it, but pain flared from wounds I had thought closed.
“Uuugh!!”
At this rate I was going to get stabbed again…
Bang.
Right beside me. A gunshot. Not James on the right.
“H-huuh… huuuh… huuuuh!”
Angela. She swung the muzzle immediately and blew the leg out from under the one coming at my back.
“Uwaaaaaah!!!”
A cultist who had just lost a leg to James lunged at him anyway. Size difference and injuries told the story—James simply seized the man, threw him, drew his knife, and started stabbing.
“Kyaaaaaah!!”
While all of that unfolded, a female New Skin slammed into Angela, who was still gasping for air. I started toward her—
Thuk. Thuk-thuk.
A blade carved through jaw, throat, and cheek. Even in the dark the steel glittered red as it punched the vital points. Angela shoved through the fountain of blood and rose to her feet.
“…H-huuh… huuuh… huuuuh… huuuuuuh!!”
Then she fell on the corpse again and drove the knife into the heart over and over, as if she needed to make certain it was dead.
Over and over.
Over and over.