The Men

Gunfire sang overhead from a lucky bitch who'd found a working rifle somewhere. From the sound of it, she'd found a hell of a lot of ammunition, too; she was certainly careless about wasting it to keep Mark's head down. He stayed low and crawled closer to the concrete hummock shielding him from her fire. It had fallen from an overpass that was in the process of coming to pieces; its sharp edges suggested that it was a relatively recent loss. He tucked himself against it and waited for the firing to cease.

It did, momentarily, and with a yell Mark and his three squadmates went up and over the concrete and charged the two women that had been keeping them down. They were on the western edge of skirmish that spanned two blocks, and if they could roll up this end, the ragtag team of women that had been holding on to this useless suburb of Des Moines could be finished off today. Another couple of weeks, and the Iowa push would be back on its feet from the disastrous summer they'd had, losing two feet of ground for every one held. The command center at Des Moines coordinated the entire strategy of the mid-North border, and it had been hard-pressed to keep that very border off its doorstep until this month.

Mark, Thomas, Vane, and Barkley stormed towards the planter the two women were behind. As he came around the left side, Mark saw one woman struggling with a very nice rifle- not nice enough, however, to avoid the jam that had stopped it from firing. A single clip lay at the woman's feet, and Mark was pleased to assume that her reckless firing had been more from desperation than over-confidence. As Vane and Barkley came around the far side of the planter, the second woman, who stood brandishing a machete over her stalled companion, reached down and grabbed her arm, trying to pull her to her feet for a retreat. She was short and slim, with straight blonde hair and breasts that barely pushed out her uniform. She looked tough, though, and her eyes were hard as she swept the machete to keep them back. Her companion looked up and gasped just in time to see the four men dive into combat. Mark caught the blade of the machete on his police baton, rescued from an abandoned station not a day before. Its glossy finish took a deep notch from the blade, but with a twist he caught the weapon and tugged it from her grasp. Vane and Barkley tackled the rifle-wielder as Mark and Thomas faced off with the other, who drew what looked like an old kitchen knife from her pocket.

As she glanced around her face grew grim at the sight of her captured comrade and she began backing away. Mark and Thomas flanked her, stopping her from fleeing, and as she realized her imminent capture she grew , leaping wildly at Thomas, hoping to make it past him on pure aggression. Thomas stayed cool and took the knife in the arm as Mark threw himself on top of the hellion from behind, pinning her down and slamming her wrist on the ground until she lost hold of the knife.

Thomas cursed fluently. "This one's mine, Mark. This bitch has a lot of unpleasantness coming to her." The bitch in question was writhing beneath Mark as she struggled to get free of his larger frame. He pressed a hand to his slashed arm. "Not the least of which will be a little "eye for an eye." These two had some nice pieces, they did."

Mark slammed his arm on the back of her neck and she finally went limp. He nodded to Thomas as he rose. "All yours. She's not much to my taste anyway; I like 'em less blonde and with bigger tits, though I love the spirit. I'll take the gear if you carry her." With a nod to Vane, who carried his trussed-up but still conscious foe on his shoulders, and Barkley, who had picked up the rifle and clip, they trekked back to the field command where they left Thomas and their burdens and headed back to the line.