Stigmatic, Part 1

Date: 07/01/2001
From: ThomasMalthus

He had never really believed it before when they said history repeats itself. Human nature was too chaotic, too random to have the same sort of thing happen twice.

Yet here they were, making a stand at the Alamo. It was the Alamo Club, yes, but when he had named it that he wasn't intending a big showdown with the government, he was merely hoping to impress some financial bigwigs in the Travis and Crockett City areas of Texas.

Of course the Texas patriots had won the day back then, whereas their own fate was still up in the air. It was a time for courage, a time to show their individual and collective mettle. Too bad he didn't command an army of well-disciplined soldiers. He led a ragtag band of ruffians who were not used to fighting for their lives. Evidence of that fact was seen in the sniveling form before him.

"I got a wife and kids, man", Gordon pleaded pathetically. The man staring down at him with an air of authority had always pegged him as a wimp, when the chips were down. "You can't make me do this."

"What do you think?" he replied with a sneer. "They're just gonna let you go out there? Surrender? Your body's gonna have more holes in it than a whiffle ball before you so much as utter a syllable."

"Please, man," the balding man in his early forties continued to beg. "I gotta get out there. I can't die in here like this."

"What's the matter?" the other man said with a smile. "Where's your sense of adventure? Where's your sense of history? Don't you wanna go down in the history books like Jim Bowie? Your kids'd like that. Reading about their daddy in all the history books."

"I don't care about that!" the man exclaimed, fed up with the whole scenario. "You're sick, man. I'm done with you!" As the older man started to walk away, his boss, Colin Mallory, pulled a gun from his black leather jacket.

"It's too bad really," Colin remarked as he pulled the trigger three times, burying three bullets in the man's back. "People who get shot in the back trying to escape...they're more or less forgotten about."

Colin felt another shell rock the place. 'Yep,' he thought, 'Santa Ana's coming. And this time, he's going to win.'

***
Rembrandt hit the dirt, spinning on the broken ground, trying to position himself to get up so he could catch Q-Ball when he came through the wormhole. The Cryin' Man tried to take a quick look around to see if there was a hospital nearby they could take him to, but the dust he had kicked up was obstructing his view. Even when it settled, the place looked hazy. Unnaturally so.

Remmy wasn't quite standing upright when Quinn came through, but he did his best to catch him. While Quinn did land in his friend's arms, he send both of them crashing back to the ground. Rembrandt groaned painfully.

As Rembrandt once again tried to push himself up off the ground, a difficult task with a body lying on your stomach as dead weight, Wade came through the vortex. Unable to avoid hitting the two of them, she did her best to make the landing as smooth as possible. She didn't do too well. "Ow!!" Rembrandt exclaimed.

"Sorry," Wade replied with a grimace. "Let's get Quinn out of the way before the Professor comes through." Wade stood easily and took one of Quinn's arms, and Rembrandt took the other as he began to stand up. As they began to move out of the path of the vortex, Arturo came through shouting "Incoming!" He managed to avoid hitting Quinn, but ran smackdab into Remmy, knocking him down face first into the dust.

"You people are tryin' to kill me," Rembrandt complained as he got up. "Landin' on me like I'm some kind of mattress. What a way to treat a guy doing a good deed."

"Payback, Mr. Brown," Arturo replied with a little chagrin. "Simple payback." Turning his mind to the serious matters at hand, the Professor looked at Quinn, who was being uneasily supported by Wade. The Professor moved to hold him up on his right side. "We should find a hospital right away."

"This place doesn't exactly look like a hospital zone," Wade commented, looking at the desolate landscape.

Rembrandt heard a loud sound in the distance. "Yeah, and that doesn't sound like thunder."

"Well, we've got to try!" Arturo exclaimed, more irately than he had intended. "I'm sorry. But we have no idea what's happened to Mr. Mallory. I wish to God we'd never met those Lesion devils."

"It's too late for that now, Professor, what's done is done," Wade reminded him. "We'll get Quinn to a hospital no matter what." That was an order out of her mouth, not an encouragement. "How long 'til we slide, Remmy?"

Rembrandt glanced at the timer and did the math in his head. "Five days, give or take."

Another cracking sound brought more tension to the situation. The Professor surveyed their surroundings. The buildings around here were rubble, broken pieces of brick, cement and steel. "If whoever brought this place down is still about firing weaponry, I don't believe it's safe for us to stay here for long."

"We should get movin'," Remmy agreed.

"You've got my vote," Wade replied. Arturo and Rembrandt draped Quinn's arms over their shoulders and carried him that way. It was an arrangement that would wear thin after while; neither man was getting any younger, nor were they in the best physical shape.

They heard some expressions of pain from beneath some scattered debris. Wade dug as best she could, trying to find the source of the cries. "Now is hardly the time for good samaritanism, Miss Welles," Arturo commented, although it was half-hearted. Wade soon cleared enough rubble away to reveal a burly tall Hispanic man, bleeding profusely.

"Quick, give me something to stop the bleeding," Wade commanded the others. Rembrandt tore a piece of his own clothing (the simple black-and-grey Mekkan outfit was not really Rembrandt's style anyway). Wade began to apply it to his wounds. The man deliriously brushed her away.

"Simone!" he cried out. He thrashed wildly with as little energy as he had.

"Simone's not here," Wade told him gently. He seemed to accept the news with grace, but a look of sadness mixed with the pain already evident in his face. He opened his eyes and looked at Wade.

"Too late...for me now," he managed to say. He coughed up blood for a little while. "Get to Simone. She's with the others..." He couldn't speak anymore. His head fell back against the wall, exhausted from the effort of talking.

"What are we gonna do now?" Rembrandt asked.

"We can't just leave him here to die," Wade pointed out.

Arturo pondered the situation for a moment, then gave orders. "Mr. Brown, you stay here with our newfound patient, and watch over him and Mr. Mallory. Miss Welles and I will continue on and try to find some evidence of civilized life, perhaps these 'others' that this man spoke of."

"Why me?" Rembrandt complained, though not with much protestation in his voice. The support beam that had kept the injured man from being killed instantly still stood, and there was nothing else around that could fall and hit them if the area was shelled. Except, of course, the shell itself. Rembrandt tried not to think about that.

Arturo spoke frankly. "I could not hope to defend the timer or Mr. Mallory, much less save this man's life, if something were to happen. And Miss Welles lacks the finesse to deal with a situation in which violence is not called for."

"Oh, you're just saying that because I've threatened to kill someone on three of the last five worlds we visited," Wade mockingly pouted. She playfully punched the Professor in the arm.

"Just don't forget about us, OK?" Remmy called out as the two of them walked away.

***
Michael Mallory paced nervously around the room. Amanda, his wife, sat silently, staring intently at an empty corner of the room.

"I just wish they would stop the bombing," he said, distress and grief dripping from his voice. "Or...or maybe if they just unleashed it all. Just so it's over. I just want it over."

"It'll never be over," Amanda said in a monotone voice. "Don't you see? We've created a monster. A legendary monster. And that doesn't end, not even with death. Death only makes it worse."

"It can't get much worse than this, Amanda," Michael stated in frustration. "I can't keep a job. Nobody'll hire me. We can't hold onto this house for much longer."

"I wish we'd never given him life," Amanda cried. "It was so much easier before...and now this." She wept openly and bitterly, burying her head in her husband's lap.

"Maybe you're right," Michael agreed to his sobbing wife, looking back on the strange situation surrounding his son's birth. "My God, Amanda, maybe you're right."

***
The Professor and Wade heard voices coming from inside a part of the complex that hadn't been shelled into oblivion yet. They were faint, too low for the sliders to understand exactly what they were saying, but they sounded desperate. Bursts of gunfire from inside seemed to follow the artillery blasts. Perhaps someone inside was fighting back.

"Shall we risk going in there and finding out what's going on?" Professor Arturo asked Wade.

His female companion shrugged. "Doesn't look like we have many options here. Might as well go with that one." With that, the two of them moved inside the worn room. And found dozens of guns, ranging from small arms and large rifles and semi-automatics, pointed in their direction.

"We mean you no harm," Arturo told them slowly. "We merely wish to speak to whoever's in charge here."

"Yeah," said a voice from the shadows moving slowly out into what showed of the sunlight through the haze of warfare. "What do you want with me?" The rough, devil-may-care voice was attached to a scruffy looking young Caucasian with shoulder-length brown hair.

"Who are you?" Wade asked.

The man scoffed. "What...you been livin' in a cave in Mongolia? I'm Colin Mallory, the homicidal maniac who the Feds are shellin' this place to get to. Now we get to the important stuff, like who you are." Wade and the Professor had never heard the man's name before, and they soon wondered if they would regret having heard it at all.

ThomasMalthus

Colin Korresh?

Date: 07/02/2001
From: Recall317

"And Miss Welles lacks the finesse to deal with a situation in which violence is not called for."

What is it about a violent Wade that is so appealing? :)

R317

Interesting...

Date: 07/03/2001
From: IamBoris2001

I look forward to learning more about the "strange situation" surrounding Colin's birth.

--IamBoris2001

nice TM

Date: 07/07/2001
From: Yeontoo

dear TM

Nice start :) Would this be a sequel? or like the next episode?

I like the Prof and Wade seeing Colin :) Even if he is dumb "Im the maniac":-p

Blessings

Yeontoo

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Nominated by DMD