The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: The Butcher and the Black Tide, Part 10 of 13

Lucky Ford is deep in the corrupt heart of Hellbörg’s lair. Will he find Grease dead, alive, or worse? Only the doctor knows, and he does not appreciate unscheduled office visits.

The Butcher and the Black Tide is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is Part 10 of The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: The Butcher and the Black Tide. If you haven’t read Part 1. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, and Part 9 check them out before reading any further.

Content Warnings: Violence, Gun Violence, Death, Torture, Gore, Body Horror, Mild Swearing, Drug Use, Tobacco Use

TUESDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 13, 1943
LA BATERIA DE LOS ACANTILLADOS
THE SOUTHERN COAST OF SPAIN

It was the air that struck Lucky first. It had settled in the gloom like a pool of standing filth, wet and heavy. After experiencing the dry sandpaper winds outside, entering the Romanian's bunker was like sinking into a swamp.

The fire station, once home to the cannon's firing mechanisms and observation equipment, was packed with ramshackle bunks and piles of stained, rotten bedrolls. Lucky pulled his undershirt up over his nose and mouth as he stepped over the moldy rags and corpses.

He took up a position near the door, out of sight and behind cover, shotgun at the ready, waiting for a counter-attack. After two minutes, he realized that there were no klaxons sounding, no men yelling, no shots fired. No one was coming.

Lucky creaked the door open slowly, sweeping the hallway outside with his shotgun muzzle. He found no targets. A grenade had gone off inside the base and no one cared.

The stink of hundreds of sick men hung humid in the air, permeating the walls. Lucky made his way into the low hallway with its rounded ceiling. He felt like a rat tunneling through garbage. Opium pipes crunched under his boots with every step, some still warm. They were strewn across the floor by the dozen, the burnt chemical odors wafting up from them still pungent.

It was like a filthy maze, a labyrinth of broken fixtures where infected, unconscious bolseteros were laid out in every hallway and nook to squirm and moan. They had been left to slowly die from their afflictions. None of them acknowledged the armed soldier creeping between them. Those mercenaries who could fight had been drawn out to confront Bucket and Emilia. Those who were left were as good as dead anyway. Lucky'd seen better conditions in newsreels about POW camps.

He surveyed each detail from behind the barrel of his shotgun, unsure of what he would encounter through the next door.

In one room, two skeletal men, each with horrific disfigurements on their faces and both missing an arm, struggled together to lift half a body from a pile of twisted corpses. They could barely lift the remains, much less force them into the gaping maw of a hungry incinerator. Neither of them so much as looked up when Lucky entered the sweltering room. He left them to their work.

The next door took four kicks to open. There was a loud crunch, and it shifted a few inches inward. Hundreds of pounds of ice poured out the small opening, cascading shaved crystals up to Lucky's calves. An ice machine inside hadn't been turned off in months and had gone into overdrive. He didn't want to consider what the Romanian would keep in cold storage. Lucky kicked the frost off of his boots and moved on.

Everywhere Lucky looked was packed with moaning smoke-addicts, but no prisoners, no Hellbörg. Bucket and Emilia didn't have time for him to just be running around. One of these ruined men would have to give him directions.

Lucky reached what he thought was the main hallway of the battery and picked his man. This bolsetero had propped himself against the wall with his spindly legs stretched out before him. His eyes were closed, and his body shuddered with constant spasms. His groans were the loudest and he writhed the most vigorously, which made him the healthiest broken man in sight. Lucky could only hope he was lucid enough to answer questions.

“Wake up,” Lucky said. He poked the bolsetero with his boot. The man cracked his crusty eyes open to yellowed slits then pulled off his gas mask to better see the person standing over him. The crazy gas had burned off the man's eyebrows, and his nose was nearly melted away.

“Where is the Romanian?” Lucky demanded.

“Ugh,” the bolsetero groaned. He tried to flop over to lay on the floor but recoiled in pain when he put weight onto his right side. His right forearm was gone, amputated above the elbow, a fresh wound wrapped in soiled bandages. The burns on his face were an effect of the crazy gas, but the mutilated limb was blast-induced, possibly one of Lucky's own victims. Another shudder ran through the bolsetero's body and he looked back up at Lucky and his gun.

“Fumo...” he pleaded, gesturing to the sodium-sobrialux pipe that lay just out of reach of his remaining hand. Lucky scooped the long opium pipe off the floor.

“Not 'til you tell me where Hellbörg is,” Lucky told him, even though Lucky knew the man didn't speak a word of English.

“Não...” the man groaned. He stretched as far as he could toward the pipe in Lucky's hand. “Fumo...”

“Hellbörg first,” Lucky demanded again. “The Romanian, la Medida, where is he?”

“La Medida?” the bolsetero asked. His eyes opened a little wider, noting Lucky’s face, his uniform. He craned his shuddering neck to look down at his amputated arm. A look of realization lit up his crusty eyes. “Descida...”

He pointed down the hall to a closed hatch. Lucky left his side and wrenched the steel door open. It was a set of precarious metal stairs that descended into the depths of the bunker.

“Descida,” the bolsetero repeated, pointing downward. Lucky returned to drop the pipe into his outstretched hand, then ran down the hallway to the stairwell, shotgun at the ready.

“Fumo!” the wounded bolsetero howled. Lucky stopped and looked back. An agonizing seizure twisted the man's body like a pretzel, making his drop the pipe. Lucky trotted back to his side, picked the pipe up off the floor and placed its stem between the bolsetero's cracked lips. Lucky spun on his heel to run back to the stairs. The bolsetero's surprisingly strong grip around the cuff of his trousers stopped Lucky in his tracks.

“Fogo...” the bolsetero begged him, motioning to his unlit pipe. Lucky patted down his pockets. He never carried matches. Lucky shrugged, shocking the wounded mercenary enough that the pipe fell from his mouth. This time it cracked when it hit the floor.

“Sorry,” Lucky said, then ran back to the stairs. He didn't have the time.

“Merda,” the bolsetero groaned from the hallway.

Lucky cleared the stairs, then started his descent.

The further down Lucky got, the more humid it became. By the time he reached the bottom floor, the walls were sweating and fuzzy with black mold. It was sweltering, even worse than Louisiana. His fatigues were soaked through with perspiration, and the whole day's accumuled ash had melted off his skin.

The stairs ended abruptly five flights deep at a steel door. This air stank even worse than in the rest of the bunker. While the upper level burned Lucky's eyes with its noxious odor of illness and chemical smoke, down below, in the guts of Hellbörg's lair, the smell was different, it was rancid. It smelled like the congealed gore that stained the cliffs: a mixture of fear, pain, blood, and death. A thin stream of brown liquid ran out of a crack in the concrete beneath the door. How a man with no arms or legs managed to get down five flights of stairs was mystery to Lucky, but this had to be it. The door was the only thing the stairwell led to.

Lucky double-checked his shotgun: the chamber and tube were full and the bayonet was secure. The safety on his Colt was off. He took one breath, slammed the handle on the door open and rushed through, weapon shouldered.

It was like he had stepped into Hell.

The room was cavernous: dark, humid, and echoing with the dripping of unknown fluids. A thick ooze sucked at his soles with every step. The smell that was horrible outside the door was overpowering within. Lucky choked on the infested air as he swung his shotgun around, desperately searching for targets. The only lighting was a row of red bulbs along the perimeter of the room, causing the accumulated fluids congealed on the floor to glisten under their naked glare. A slow trickle by his boot told him the floor was slightly slanted, no doubt leading to a drain, and, eventually, to the pipe in the cliff.

It took just a second for Lucky's eyes to adjust, though he knew his nose would never be able to filter out the stench.

A series of cells surrounded the open central area of the room, each no bigger than six by six feet. Spiked metal bars had been sunk into the concrete, their wicked barbs facing inward. Lucky was standing at the site of hundreds of murders.

There were no sounds from the cells, no movement or any sign that anyone was left alive down there. No one even left to tell him Grease's fate.

He was too late. His knees felt weak.

Lucky stumbled forward. The putrid air left him dizzy and short of breath. The red room closed in black on the edges of his vision. He was walking blind. This fight had been for nothing. So many dead. Miller and Bucket were sacrificing themselves out there for nothing. Lucky bumped into a table in the darkness.

Scalding white operating lights flared to life around him, blinding him. In shock, Lucky's finger tightened on the Winchester's trigger. He blew one of the lighting arrays away in shower of glass and sparks.

“Stop!” someone yelled. The voice seemed to come from everywhere.

“Where are you?” Lucky shouted back. He whipped his shotgun around, searching for the voice. The riotous storm of blurs and starbursts dancing in his vision slowly subsided. He had crashed into an operating table. It was surrounded by featureless steel consoles, reminding him of Metzger's torture theater in the heart of Vesuvius. Lucky staggered back, his boots sliding across the slick floor. Rancid red muck squelched as he struggled to maintain his balance. He was standing in pooled liquefied human remains left to putrefy.

“You have ruined enough, American,” the voice said. It reverberated throughout the room. It was monotonous, as mechanical as Emilia's when she disguised it. “Do you not realize the work I have accomplished here?”

The Romanian was here, somewhere. Lucky spun around, though no targets presented themselves to his shotgun.

“Why don't you come out and give me a tour then?” Lucky shouted back. He was ready to plug the murderer.

“My work is revolutionary,” Hellbörg continued. “Do you know the toll of this war? Millions dead, millions more mutilated. I have found a way to heal all of those who have been maimed, no matter their injury.”

“By murdering hundreds!” Lucky growled back.

“Prisoners, the insane, the unwell, trouble makers, those who might as well be already dead. A just sacrifice,” Hellbörg intoned.

“Forcing others to make your sacrifice is never just,” Lucky snarled. He wasn't interested in hearing the Romanian's response to this challenge, just in stalling. The monster was in the room, somewhere. Lucky stalked around in a slow circle, attempting to locate the source of the voice.

“Surely you are aware of my sacrifice,” the Romanian responded. “You understand why my work is so important, and why I pursue it with such zeal.”

The voice was directly above Lucky. He stopped and looked up to find a loudspeaker bolted to the moldy concrete. Another spotlight burst to life in the center of the room, illuminating a device that looked like a powered wheelchair with some sort of circular metal socket instead of a seat.

“I heard you should have stayed dead.” Lucky called back, baiting him as he approached the device.

“You really do not understand the progress that I have made here, do you?” Hellbörg inquired. “If you knew my work it would not surprise you that the SS Department Three considers it essential to their ideal future.”

“No surprise there. You and them are the same: monsters, and insane.”

The wheelchair was parked directly below a smooth circular hatch in the ceiling, maybe a yard across. The hatch's shape perfectly matched the socket where the chair's seat should have been. A small periscope lowered from the ceiling near the hatch to eyeball Lucky while Hellbörg continued:

“My work has the capacity to make a man whole again. You would deny your wounded comrades this gift?”

“The gift of having living pieces cut off other people and grafted onto their bodies?” Lucky countered.

“For now, yes, living, as is my expertise. But with work, the tissues and organs of the deceased will be viable. Or perhaps some other hero can develop artificial replacements. Until then, I will do what I can. The world will not be the same when my work is done. My work will prevent anything like what happened to me from destroying another life,” Hellbörg said. He was desperate to convince Lucky, like he was a barometer for the reactions the Romanian would garner when he presented these horrific procedures to the world.

“Saving your life first, I assume,” Lucky said.

“And why not me first? I have spent years creating this gift. Have I not earned it?” Hellbörg asked. Even through the loudspeaker he sounded incredulous. He was no philanthropist. He was a selfish killer, obsessed with making himself whole again at the ultimate expense of everyone else. “Would you like to see what you are so against repairing, American?”

“Let's take a look,” Lucky growled. His shotgun was ready to see him, too.

“Step back,” the voice warned. Jets of cool air shot out from the lip of the ceiling hatch, and the whole metal circle lowered down, revealing itself as the base of a glass tube filled with a clear fluid. The lights’ glare blinded Lucky to its contents.

The tube continued to extend down and out of the ceiling until it plugged into the wheelchair with a click. A mechanical claw released it and retreated back upward. The spotlights illuminating the contraption and the operating table cut off, leaving Lucky in total darkness.

A soft white glow hummed to life from the base of the tube, illuminating a twisted shape within. Dorin Hellbörg was suspended inside by thick gel and marionette wires. He glared at Lucky with his remaining eye through a single goggle lens. That furious, lidless orb, jerking from side to side in its socket, was the only part of him that still resembled a living human being.

Pipes and tubes pierced his twisted, misshapen torso, keeping his ravaged organs alive. A clear tube snaked deep into the cavity once covered by his nose to provide air, and another lanced his abdomen, pumping a lumpy gray fluid into his stomach. Dozens of other wires sprouted from his amputated legs and arms and reached into the cylinder’s socketed stainless steel base.

Hellbörg stared at Lucky with that eye, then twitched the ragged remains of his tongue and throat. The melted sinews and severed nerves in his face and neck tweaked hair-thin copper wires. These filaments ran from his flesh and connected to a clacking device at the top of his tube. Seconds later, his phantom words rattled out of a set of tinny speakers built into his chair:

“You could put a bullet in such a wretch as I, American?” Hellbörg taunted. “Perhaps I should have hired you instead of Mister O'Laughlin. Your type of mercy is the kind I would pay good gold to command.”

The effort of continuous speech burst several pustules that had formed in the cavity where Hellbörg's jaw had once been, adding a sickening green tint to the thick fluid around his face.

The bile that had rushed up Lucky's throat out on the cliff made its final push, exiting his mouth and splashing onto the floor, joining the slow flow of viscera on its way to being expelled into the black sea.

The exposed muscles in Hellbörg's amputated, cauterized thighs twitched, sending nerve signals through the wires that ran into his electric wheelchair. Gore squelched as the mutilated surgeon rolled forward.

Lucky stepped back and raised his shotgun. The Romanian managed to look unimpressed even with only a single goggled, lidless eye to convey his sentiments.

“Would I reveal myself to you if you posed me any danger?” Hellbörg asked. Lucky had no way of telling whether the Romanian was bluffing, but the glass between them certainly looked thick enough to stop buckshot. Lucky lowered his gun but kept his finger on the trigger.

“American, I have been engaged in this undertaking for half of a decade, taking in subjects the entire time without worry of the outside world,” Hellbörg droned. He rolled forward while he spoke, forcing Lucky to jump out of the way so his toes wouldn't get run over.

“I know why you are here: my latest subjects,” Hellbörg said. The butcher had put it together. “Do you know how your American brethren came to me?”

Lucky knew how he'd last seen them. Hellbörg kept talking:

“The tall one,” he was talking about Jonesy, “He was driven mad. The other, of Italian descent...”

Grease, Lucky realized.

“He was missing his right leg at the patella, and was extremely profane about it.”

“That's how I last saw them,” Lucky responded carefully. Hellbörg was talking like they were both still alive.

“Given what my enemies have told you, could you believe that I have corrected these problems?” Hellbörg asked. He rolled to his operating table and locked his wheels into two ruts at its head, which activated a whirring mechanism within it. Above, the remaining spotlights snapped back on, while below, a series of wires plugged themselves into the sockets at the base of his tank.

The operating table sprung to life, blossoming like a stainless steel flower. Lucky inched backward. Each of the consoles attached to it opened like tackle boxes to reveal trays of arcane surgical tools and rows of buttons. Spindly, segmented arms, each six feet long, rose on either side, glistening like the chrome beetle legs. Small fingers on the end of each arm grasped and stretched as the butcher flexed his phantom hands.

“Without the sacrifice of every single one of my subjects, people like your friends would have been relegated to being cripples for life,” Hellbörg said.

The dying muscles that had once commanded his biological arms twitched beneath his skin, setting the spidery metal limbs to tasks. They stretched and danced around, his tinny fingers tapping each of his surgical instruments with a cheery clink.

“Now, thanks to my rehearsals, it only takes a minimal amount of cutting to repair maladies such as theirs.”

“Where are they?” Lucky whispered, too incensed to yell.

“My work is important, it is the Angel Micheal's work. It is greater than they, you, or even I. So I propose a compromise.”

“A deal with you?” Lucky asked. He kept his finger on the trigger. There could be no compromise with the devil; he knew what Hellbörg had done.

“It would be a simple arrangement: you leave me to my work, and I leave you to your friends,” Hellbörg offered. His tiny metal hands turned their palms up, like they were offering Lucky a gift.

“Do you know what is happening upstairs? Your work won't continue, no matter what you offer.”

“That is no matter,” Hellbörg countered. One of his silvery hands selected a gleaming scalpel from his work bench and twirled it deftly between his mechanical fingers like he was spinning a pencil. “I am a very rich man. There are many in this world with need for my resources and the sense to abandon antiquated philosophies such as yours.”

“There isn't enough gold in the world to stop what you got coming,” Lucky growled. His finger tightened on the shotgun's trigger.

“That is debatable, American,” Hellbörg responded. “I have thrived in this land, that is true, but there are many others in this time of uncertainty who would welcome me.”

“No matter what you accomplish, you will never be forgiven for how you got there.”

“So you would not allow me to continue? Who are you to deny progress that will change the world?” Hellbörg droned. If he had feet, Lucky imagined the Romanian would have been making this speech from the top of a soapbox.

“You've changed it enough already,” Lucky responded. He knew it would take more than a couple shotgun blasts to break through Hellbörg's tank, but the M1897's slam-fire could send six shots his way before he knew what was happening. It didn't matter what kind of booby traps the butcher had set, there was no way that husk could react in time to dodge point blank shotgun fire. Lucky continued stalling:

“You've destroyed lives and families and killed hundreds. And as to who I think I am, I'm the one who's here to stop you.”

“That, too, is open to debate,” Hellbörg said. If he had lips, he'd have been smirking. Hellbörg's insectine fingers danced across the buttons on his console. Metal squealed from somewhere behind Lucky. He risked a look. Two of the cell doors had creaked open, no doubt for the Romanian to taunt him with Grease and Jonesy's mutilated corpses.

In a split second the operating lights above flared searingly bright, blinding Lucky again. He was firing his shotgun before he even knew what was happening.

A cold breeze kissed Lucky's cheek, and blood spurted from his left shoulder. The pain came an instant later.

Despite the shock, Lucky pulled the trigger and held it, slamming the shotgun's slide back and forward as fast as he could, firing off a thunderous shot with each motion. The kickback from each round was excruciating against his new wound. He heard his pellets pepper metal, liquid, and concrete. No glass. Hellbörg was gone.

Lucky used his last two rounds to blow out the glaring spotlights. He instinctively began shoving shells back into the weapon. Even blind, his training had become instinct. Sergeant Burke had taught him better than to leave a weapon dry in the field. His sight recovered slowly, fading in until the red glow around him was enough to light the room.

Lucky’s shoulder throbbed, and he found fresh blood dripping down his arm and off his elbow. Hellbörg’s scalpel was embedded in the stock of Lucky's shotgun. The butcher had flung his carving knife with such force that it pierced all the way through the hardwood to slice into flesh. Lucky tried to yank the blade out of the stock, but it was in deep.

“Shit,” he groaned. Warm red was dribbling down his arm and chest, but the Romanian was on the move; Lucky’s wound would have to wait. He held the shotgun at his hip, keeping the exposed blade away from him, and stalked forward.

Hellbörg's wheels had carved two ruts into the bloody floor that led away from the table and back to the hatch he had sprouted from. His motorized chair was abandoned underneath. He had taken refuge back in the ceiling.

“I cannot allow your petty prejudices to stop my work,” the speakers droned from all around Lucky. “But I am a reasonable man. I left you what you came for.”

A rumble shook the solid ceiling, low but powerful, like the hydraulic aircraft lifts on the Saint George. The damn Romanian was escaping: the hatch was an elevator.

“You can't outrun me, you son of a bitch!” Lucky yelled at the ceiling.

“I am not worried, American,” the monotone voice taunted. “I need only outrun you if you can outrun them.”

“Outrun who...” Lucky started. A low moan sounded from the open cells.

It was a primal sound, one of animal pain and endless torture. A familiar smell of infection wafted out, threatening to turn Lucky's stomach again. A second moan joined the first.

The I-soldiers.

Lucky raised his shotgun, though he knew it'd do as much damage as throwing a shoe at them.

“The întǎri soldați are not the most beautiful of my creations, but aesthetics are not what Department Three commissioned them for,” the loudspeakers explained. “The strength of five men, three hearts, four lungs, subcutaneous armor rivaling that of a tank, neurological chemicals to facilitate suggestion: they are truly barbaric. But I ask this: who would expect a German to request any less?”

With that, the speakers cut out. Electricity raced up from the floor of the cells, illuminating two restrained abominations in harsh blue light.

The tortured men howled as the sparks coursed through their bodies. Arcs jumped along their rows of steel stitches, sputtering in their flesh and raising steam with each pop. Their convulsions snapped their restraints as if they were only held by suggestion, shearing case-hardened steel to escape the scathing arcs. Their howls rose to twin roars of rage.

Lucky was already out the door, running up the stairs. The grenade he left behind wouldn't do much to slow down either one, it was just wishful thinking. Their footsteps shook concrete and bedrock. They were close behind, twin behemoths crafted from bolted steel, stolen flesh, and bone-deep agony.

Lucky hauled ass like he was in the union.

The I-soldiers were relentless. He could hear their feral grunts as they tore through the hallways behind him, ripping apart corroded equipment and wounded bolseteros alike. The stairs had slowed them somewhat, but they were catching back up, furious and single-minded.

The hall ahead stopped at the three way intersection. A crooked sign indicated that the salida, the exit, was to the left. Lucky rounded the sharp corner, barely managing to vault over a stretcher that had been left in the middle of the floor. A wounded bolsetero with a splinted leg grasped weakly at Lucky's uniform. Even if he had managed to grab on, the man was too frail to hold a kerchief against the wind.

“Fumo...” he begged. Lucky shook his head and kept running. Before the bolsetero could lay back, the I-soldiers had stomped his chest into the floor under their steel-shod feet.

They were so close Lucky could hear them breathe. It was even, un-labored even while sprinting all-out in such poor air. The way Lucky's ragged breath caught in his chest he thought his lungs would explode and send him sprawling. He wouldn’t give these monsters the satisfaction.

Lucky swung around the last corner and almost ran headfirst into a squad of bolseteros. They were cowering behind the blast doors that opened to the outside. Just his luck.

Quicker than he could think, Lucky juked into a damp alcove and hid in its deep shadow. The four mercenaries were preoccupied with the battle right outside, taking turns peeking through the split where the doors opened. They'd blinded themselves with the bright beam of cinder-filtered sunlight that cut into the dank tunnel, and they'd deafened themselves with the echoes of their wild pot shots through the door. Lucky curled up tight into the shadows and held his breath.

The bolseteros didn't hear the crashing freight train that was the two I-soldiers until it was too late. One I-soldier skidded to a halt, but the other lowered his shoulder and collided with the four mercenaries like he was blindsiding a quarterback. A flurry of jackhammer punches smashed the bolseteros into the bunker door’s bare steel, leaving the metal ringing like a church bell. A gust of wind brought a layer of fine ash through the partially open doors, staining the red mess black.

The I-soldier shook the blood off his hands then wiped what was left on his trousers. Lucky could smell both of them from where he was hiding, even over the hanging odor of the bunker itself: their blood, their sweat, and their infections. The wafts of cinnamon and stale coffee were missing: neither of the I-soldiers were wearing the cloth masks he'd seen them with before.

The second I-soldier, the one with the hydraulic prosthetic leg, swayed where he stood, groaning and shaking his head like he was trying to break free of Hellbörg's narcotic fumes. Miller had said that the effects of the herbal brainwashing would wear off fast once they weren't constantly exposed to its green vapors.

Lucky hoped that would be sooner rather than later. It wouldn’t take them long to realize that he was cowering right behind them.

The dazed I-soldier reached up to touch the top of his head with something. There was a clink against his helmet and he jerked his hand away and grunted in shock. He had forgotten about the steel was bolted over his skull.

The other I-soldier’s armored knuckles were still dripping with bolsetero blood. He stood in the doorway and tried to push the doors apart. His patchwork muscles bulged and twisted under his leathery skin, straining against the staples that held him together.

The mechanisms within the sliding bunker doors groaned but held. The bolseteros had locked them in place, open just a few inches in the face of the firefight outside. Wide enough to give them a firing slit, but too narrow for an enemy t get through. The I-soldier wheezed and gave up, then turned to his befuddled companion.

“Beh-no-ree!” he grunted. The nonsense syllables weren't enough to get the other I-soldier's attention.

“Gree!” he grunted again, to no response. The second I-soldier was dumb-founded and was still tapping his helmet with whatever object he was holding.

The first I-soldier stomped over and grabbed his companion's thick wrist, wrenching the object from his hand and throwing it to the floor. It skipped across the hard concrete and landed near Lucky's hiding spot. Lucky held his breath, but the second I-soldier didn’t get a chance to retrieve it. Instead, he got dragged to the bunker door. Motivated by a heavy smack on the side of his helmet, he grabbed hold and together they wrenched the doors open.

Gears screamed as they were forced, but the sounds of shearing metal was nothing compared to the din of the barrage Bucket and Emilia were laying down outside. A wall of sound, gunfire, screams, blasts, and blazes roared into the open bunker. Gray light flared, illuminating the I-soldiers frozen in the breach. The pair stood stock still, mesmerized by the sun, dim as it was through the ashen cloud cover.

Lucky was surveyed the battlefield from behind them.

Flame had already consumed many of the vehicles and structures on either side of the steep road descending to the bunker door. Emilia's rifle grenades had dug deep craters into the packed dirt road and blown the ash drifts aside. Every other square foot of the battlefield had been tilled by heavy machine gun rounds that Bucket had laid down.

The two had taken the gun nests at the base's hilltop entrance and had turned their crossfire against the bolseteros below. Bucket was behind the trigger of a venerable Maxim machine gun. The gun's endless belt of .303 rounds emerged from the duffel bag he'd brought from the Gallo Rojo's weapons cache.

Emilia was laying down a constant barrage of rifle grenades, launching them as fast as she could load them. The sandbags she used as cover showered her with grit every time an enemy got a bead of her, but she responded to each white puff with a grenade.

Dozens of bolseteros cowered behind whatever cover they could find, be it bullet-tattered buildings, shredded sandbags, or burning trucks. Few had the time to peek over their chosen cover before they were peppered with shrapnel and bullets, and fewer and even fewer retained the presence of mind to fire back.

The I-soldiers had stood frozen long enough. A nearby blast snapped them out of their daze, and the sight of their masked tormentors was suddenly more than either of their drug-numbed minds could handle. Both armored men went berserk, charging like bulls into the pinned lines of bolseteros from behind.

Lucky waited for the chaos of the charging I-soldiers to reach a fever pitch. Bolseteros were flying through the air, their crunched-in helmets clattering to the ground, their rifles snapping like kindling. It would be a mad dash through that mayhem and up the hill. When Lucky looked down to steel himself with a deep breath, he saw it, laying in the grime, lit by a mottled sunbeam: the black plastic comb that Grease never parted with.

Hellbörg had been telling the truth about one thing. He had repaired Grease, in his own way. He'd replaced Grease's amputated leg with a stainless steel prosthetic then grafted pieces of four other men onto him.

Grease had been attempting his old nervous habit: slicking his hair back. The lingering herbal vapors had him so tanked that the motion was simple muscle memory. He didn't remember that his skull was covered in steel.

Marco Benolli was still in there, suppressed by pain and drugs. The howls that had sounded like Italian curses the night before were all him, expressing himself in his usual, eloquent fashion.

Lucky then knew the other I-soldier, too.

It was Jonesy, the bastard murderer who had tried to defect to the Vargulf. His unintelligible grunts were suddenly clear: narcotic-numbed attempts at 'Benolli' and 'Grease.’ The I-soldier couldn’t be anyone else: he was the only person in Spain other than Lucky who could know both those names.

The crazy eyes he'd seen in the firelight at Las Encrucijadas had been familiar because Lucky’d seen them lit by orange flame before.

Lucky knew he could still help Grease, he could stop this before he got it any worse. As for Jonesy, Lucky didn't care anymore. What the Romanian had done to him was a far worse punishment than any he could have dispensed himself.

The I-soldiers pressed forward, closer and closer to Bucket and Emilia’s lines of fire. Once got Grease in their sights, they’d open up on him, they didn’t know who he was yet. He had to stop them.

Lucky stuffed Grease's comb into his pocket and rushed out into the sunlight, trench gun at his hip. Ash and broken bodies fell to the ground around the I-soldiers while smoke and fire pushed through the volcanic fog and escaped skyward. Rifle rounds bounced off the twin berserkers as they waded through the panicked mercenaries, pounding the life out of gas-addled bolseteros with steel-wrapped knuckles. Lucky followed in their bloody wake.

“Grease!” Lucky shouted. He had to get his attention. Grease's stitched back was him. The I-soldier sluggishly punched one bolsetero through the door of a truck with a punishing right cross while pulping the chest cavity of a second squirming mercenary with his left.

Lucky took cover behind a nearby bullet-riddled emplacement.

“Grease!” he yelled again. Still no response. The machine gun fire from the top of the hill had let up. Lucky risked a glance and saw Bucket poke his big glasses over the top of the gun sights. He spit out his cigarette and yelled something at Emilia, who also stopped firing. She dropped her rifle and drew her two Webley revolvers. Their razor-tipped bayonets were ready to go to work.

Emilia leaped over the sandbags and began advancing down the hill, moving fast even in her armor. Bucket stood and began advancing behind her, covering her with bursts of snap fire from his M1928 Thompson. They had realized what Lucky was after, because their combined fire kept the bolseteros pinned so he could chase down the I-soldiers.

“Grease!” Lucky tried again. He was just a few paces away from touching him, but Grease still wouldn't hear, so Lucky threw the comb. It dinged off Grease’s helmet, distracting him from throwing a burning tire into a bolsetero's chest. He stopped in his tracks and looked down at the fallen comb. He dropped the tire to study the familiar object. The confused bolsetero scrambled away.

“Lucky?” Grease said, confused like he had woken up while sleep walking. A smirk grotesquely stretched his plated, stitched face. Lucky grinned.

Grease was still in there.

Lucky reached out, but his feet came off the ground.

“Ford!” Jonesy yelled, easily hoisting the now-smaller man into the air by his collar. Jonesy's murderous faculties had returned in full. He swung Lucky by his shirt and threw him into the side of a truck. Lucky bounced off the quarter panel and collapsed to the ground, wheezing. Jonesy leered over him. leaning in until their faces were only an inch apart.

Tears of yellow puss ran down Jonesy’s face, stinking as they oozed across the steel plates bolted over his nose, cheekbones, and jaw. Blood that had caked around his stitches crumbled as the tortured skin stretched and tore thanks to his trembling rage.

“You did this!” he snarled. He locked his fist back like he’d nocked a arrow. His spiked metal knuckles dripped with warm blood.

Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres. Spanish translations by Caitlin Gilmore.