A Simple Job - Part 4

(For New Readers: See where it all started!)

4. Not a Leg to Stand On

A hole appeared in the creature’s right eye as it lumbered toward him and Trevor panicked. Before the unmanly scream could make its way from his brain and out his lips the Impactor round detonated inside the Juggernaut’s head with a concussive thump. The headless body staggered a step, then a second, before the legs collapsed and it fell forward to slam into the floor a half meter from Trevor, providing him an ample view directly into it’s open chest cavity.

Bile rose in his throat and he scrambled away from the corpse, forgetting his injured leg. He got a meter before the pain converted the high pitched scream he had stifled into something primal and he fell back to the floor.

“The fukk man?” the distant voice of Vance squelched in his ear.

Trevor pulled himself into a sitting position, pulled in a ragged breath, and looked down at his leg to see his boot twisted at an odd angle and blood soaking his pant leg, “I think that thing broke my god damned leg! You never said anything about a fukkin’ Juggernaut you piece of shit!”

“Crap…”

“Really? That’s all you got? ‘Crap’?! FUKK YOU!,” he wailed. “I’m fuckin dead and it’s all your fault, I’m so gonna haunt you!”

Vance didn’t respond right away but when he did Trevor could hear a desperate attempt at calm in his ear, “look, that room is the fortified antechamber for The Crusher’s vault right? There’s got to be an aid station somewhere in there.”

“What?”

“Think it through. Look around for something that could have medical stuff in it. With any luck it hasn’t been blasted to pieces by all the explosions. Better hurry it up though, my hack dampened the alerts from that section but I can’t tell if anyone might have heard the explosions and the screaming.”

“Great…”

Vance’s advice, as insufferable as it was, helped focus Trevor’s head so he could think through the pain. It made some kind of sense, the place did look like a fortress, and if he were building some military styled hard point he’d probably have medical stations around the place to take care of inevitable injuries. He found a way to hobble that didn’t put as much strain on his leg, though the pain layered itself across everything he did.

In the vids, if the hero took this kind of injury, they were usually able to find a chunk of metal or something to use as a makeshift splint and then they could walk on it fine, killing all the baddies and saving the girl. Trevor didn’t believe that would happen, not for a second, not after having experienced it.

He twitched around the chamber in short spurts, trying to not step in any Bug goo as it stank to high heaven. Near the back of the room, in the most fortified area that didn’t have a direct line of sight to the chamber’s entrance, he found a panel hanging partially open from the wall, its surface dented and slashed by shrapnel from his own ordinance. He tried to rush to it through the pain and yanked it open. Small capsules, boxes, and containers tumbled to the floor.

“Mother fukking…” he said as a large red case tumbled to his feet, a white cross flickering on its side. There was a rent in the side of the case as long as his finger with pink stuff dripping from it. He was sweating, hot drips of fear pooling in his waistband, as he tumbled against the wall trying to get the thing open. He was seeing stars and his head was getting heavier by the second. He slammed the case into the wall and it sprang open. He looked down and pawed through the spilled contents until his hand landed on a cylinder about the sized of his boot. He pulled it up to his eyes and he smiled in recognition.

It took further scrambling to get the leads pulled out and attached to his neck and chest, but when he got them in place the tube beeped and vibrated gently. The wave of euphoria struck him like a solid wall of clouds and the pain immediately vanished.

“That’s the stuff..” he breathed as the nerve blockers did their work.

“Great, you’re delirious…” Vance said.

As the pain cleared the fear and panic waned and he was able to get a good hard look at the horror that was his right leg. He tugged at the coverall to reveal a limb that has swollen, bloody, and bent into a shape that precluded continued use. If the cocktail of drugs wasn’t keeping his sanity in check he probably would have passed out from the pure visual shock of seeing the open tear in his calf and the exposed bone.

“I can see the bone through my leg, it’s mocking me.”

“Look in the medical unit, there should be something to plug that up and maybe a splint.”

“Why would the Bugs have anything my size in here?”

“Maybe because it’s not only Bugs that work in that place, quit asking stupid questions and find something useful. Hook in your vision and I’ll try to talk you through it.”

“You? Seriously? The guy who fainted the last time he cut a finger on a playing card? This is a real mess you won’t be able to handle seeing it.”

“Wow...just...wow. Shut up and hook in your eyes, maybe if you can trust me some more you might be able to walk out of there. We still need you to hook into the vault proper so don’t go dying or having an overdose.”

Trevor sighed and closed his eyes, “Vid-link Vance.” A small icon appeared in his lower right visual field, a stylized open eye. He opened his eyes and looked down

“Holy shit, you weren’t kidding about the leg...ok look at the pile of stuff to your right. Paw through it a bit...there, that white packet with the yellow tape around it. Pick it up and let’s pray that it isn’t damaged while I download the instructions. Ok so what you need to do is pull the tape off from the top and rotate the package 90 degrees to the right…”

(Continue to Part 5)