Entry #9 - Wrong place, wrong time

After the successful raid on the first floor, the three raid teams regrouped at the stairs leading into the basement Cmd. Jackson called for the hunter groups assistance in the canteen. I ordered two of our boys to stay back and watch the A.T.V. the rest of us hastily made our way through the police station. Stepping through the hole in the wall was like stepping through a portal to a whole other world. A grizzly and fucked up world.

The part of the building we blew up looked like some sort of makeshift infirmary. Old soil mattresses coated in blood and piss with emptied I.V bags and torn bandages littering the floor. The counters on the walls were trashed with empty bottles of morphine and acetaminophen.

It seemed like there were really only two people in this room when the fighting started one of them was this sickly looking man who had probably been sent to the infirmary before we even showed up. He was caked in his own sweat and had huge bite marks on his left shin. The marks were bruised and festering. But what really killed him was the deep knife incision in his neck that went all the way to the bone.

The other poor soul caught in the cross fire was a man dressed in a lab coat crushed under the rubble of the explosion. A quick look at the lab coats showed his name as DR. Martian Fortin from a hospital in a county I didn't recognize. The poor man had a piece of rebar going through his armpit going all the way out the other side and going into his skull. I don't know why I grabbed his I.D but I did. I felt sorry for the man, sure we was helping the “Raiding officers” But maybe he was forced too. It didn't feel right for him to die.

After a few more seconds of taking in the horrors the hunters gathered their composure and headed deeper inside. The rest of the halls were filled with similar gory scenes. A young man missing a leg, another guy sprawled across the floor riddled in bullet holes, an old man with his jaw blown off. As we went deeper and deeper into the police station these things became less and less shocking. And despite all this the image of doctor Fortin wouldn't leave my mind.

After a few more rooms of carnage we met Cmd. Jackson in the cantina. There were three soldiers guns at the ready watching over a line of captured “raiding officers”. Cmd. Jackson turned to our direction and lowered the volume on the walkie talking. sounds of heavy gunfire and explosions could be heard from the basement below us.

“You guys took your sweet time. I went ahead and ordered the rest of the boys to head down stairs to deal with the rest. Let’s just say we met some heavy resistance.”

“So you want us to head down there and help?”

“No, I want you to stay here and watch these bastards” He pointed over to the line of cuffed raiders. “while me and these gents head down stairs as reinforcements.” He gestured to the two soldiers standing behind him. One of the hunters stepped forward with a rather angry look on his face

“That's it? Where babysitting?”

“I mean you don't really have to watch them, You can use them as target practice, hell torture them for the sake of it, I don't care. As long as they stay here until we get back. Now any more questions or can I go help our men?”

I held out the Dr.s Id card “Just one more”

“What would that be?” Jackson gave me a confused look

“Who was Dr. Martian Fortin?” I passed the old ID card over to Jackson

He flipped it over and inspected it closer. After a second he let out a sigh “He's dead isn't he?”

“He got crushed by the wall we brought down in the beginning of the attack.”

“The Doc was a good man who would travel from settlement to settlement helping everyone he could regardless of what they did to survive. Saved a few of my own men, I'll be sad to see him go.” He tossed the I.D card to the side.

“For a man that saved the lives of some of your guys you sure are not giving him a lot of respect.”

“Trust it's sad I'll mourn him when it's time, but now is not the time, besides it seemed like he got a quick painless death, the only really tragic part of his death was he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not much more to say about it….” There was a deathly silence in the room besides the sounds of gunfire and explosions coming from down stairs.

“Look I got to go, people are going to start dying if I don't get down there.”

And without another word Cmd. Jackson and his two men went running off to the basement stairs. The canteen was filled with an unsettling aura. As I looked around most of the hunters shared my feelings about the disrespectful nature of Jackson.

“Yeah the commander was never one for caring about people” I turned around to see who said that and came face to face with one of the raiders, she had a huge grin on her face and was wearing some stylish aviators.

“Some would say his lack of empathy is enough to make you go oooh i don't know… AWOL” her grin grew bigger.

“Shut it punk” One of the hunters stepped forward and bashed her face and hit the butt of his gun. One of the articles of her glasses shattered and blood began gushing from her cheek. I could see her giving the hunter a death stair from the broken part of her glasses.

Now all I could do was sit and wait….

Author: Iron_side

Entry #8 - Going in Entry #10 - Wild Animals