JESUS IS BORD

JESUS IS BORD.
I leaned back to admire my handiwork, rubbing my thumb over the spot where the letter \"L\" used to be, before slipping my knife back into the sheath on my harness, and rubbing my bloodshot eyes. The glowing dots on my watch read 0530. I had about three hours left.
I’d set up camp in the decapitated wing of what used to be a hospital, but I needed to get moving soon. There was no protection from her here in this once-empty wing now full of ghosts, behind walls of wet, peeling plaster which fell away from the studs like the skin of geriatrics, mangled by the knife of the wet season into exposing the damp, gray orgies of dead rats, now as still as cave paintings. She would find me here. I left the signs of my camp where they fell. Fuck it. I’d let her know that I knew that she knew, and I wrote my name in tall, legible letters on the wall with soot from last night\'s chem-fire. It’s not easy to kill something once you know it has a name.
I wrapped the sling around my hand and cradled the big tube in my arms, opening the chamber to thumb in a round before deactivating the safety with a gentle beep.
The scope whined to life, my dominant eye bathed in red. Information crowded the tiny screen; distances, directions. I scanned the relatively untouched buildings further down the street, cutting the pie with my back to the wall. We’d been playing this game for days now; she out of spite, and me out of life-or-death necessity. She stood between me and a waterfront escape, between me and any road out of town. She held all the cards, and I hated her for it.
Plus, I was running out of ammo, and running low on food. The radio was in pieces-— she’d taken care of that two days ago. Besides, there was no one left to call. One by one, they’d all stopped answering: Dr. Livingstone and Two-Step were the first to go, followed by Bones, the medic, then finally Sloppy Seconds and Mahjong Mushroom, the heavy gunner team. At least I found their bodies. Lt. Voodoo just vanished, either shot or panicked. Either way, I was the last one alive.
I tried not to think about what it would feel like if one of her shots were to actually hit me. We’re trading the same stuff; a ceramic-nylon composite, with shallow fins along the base to send it spinning out of the barrel. It’s got to reach 120 revs before arming, which keeps newbies like me from blowing myself or my team into smoking bits of dog food if the round accidentally struck a target too close to my position. Without the revs, the round is a dud.
And that’s how I found out \"she\" is a she: I was creeping along the waterfront yesterday morning, looking for food and another way out of town, some narrow exit my unseen assailant might not have covered, when I heard that too-familiar whistling sound of an incoming round, like a singing telegram from God. I was hidden from view, but my cover was lousy; surrounded on three sides by the rusted hulks of two large trucks and an old bus gridlocked in a permanent traffic jam. When the round hit, the blast was going to bounce my guts like a pinball! I ran like hell for an open storefront window and dove through at the last second, hoping my soft parts would miss all the glass. I tried not to think about that moment of split-infinity when I’d feel the tip of the projectile part my hair, splitting my skull, and whacking out my brains like cattle in an abattoir.
My eyes were closed, and my mouth was open to ease the force of the blast. The next few seconds of my life were among the most terrible and horrifying. Imagine my surprise when I heard the sound of a preemie strike the ground in front of the store with a dull tell-tale ring.
And nothing else.
No deafening boom, no welcoming trumpets or harps. Minutes passed before I raised my head. The shell was lying on the doorstep, neat as you please, harmless.
I’d seen the shots used on Two-Step and Dr. Livingstone. They were clean, well-executed, and they reeked of professionalism. Time stood still as I read the writing on the shell: \"YOU HAVE 24 HOURS.\"
The message was written in clear, crisp letters. In blood-red lipstick, no less.
My blood ran cold, and each breath was a hard-won battle. Sweat was pouring down my face, my back, everywhere. I ran into the street and pressed my eye to the scope, wildly searching for what I already knew I’d find.
There, on the sixth floor window of an old hotel down the street, I saw movement. I zoomed in as tight as I could, and that’s when I saw the mocking white triangle of cotton, the under-curves of baby-fat buttocks, fatigues yanked down around well-developed thighs, ending high in a pair of standard-issue boots, filling the tiny screen of my scope in a sexless, electric red.
She was mooning me. I was so stunned I didn’t even take the shot, and I had her dead to rights. She must have known that as well, because she vanished a second later.
I wasn’t as afraid of the unknown gun with the dead-eye aim before, but this action was designed to set me against myself, and she knew it. They’d covered this in basic, during P.I.S.C.E.S. training, the Psychological Intelligence Schemes for Expediting Surrender.
\"Ladies and gentlemen, the battlefield is no place for a poet or a romantic. It is no place for a girl, and before any of you female recruits come charging up here intent on gutting me nuts to neck, hear me out. Before the Smart Round, before tanks, machine guns, before mustard gas, landmines, catapults, swords, arrows, flaming jars of cat shit, poisoned water supplies or polished mirrors, one weapon, one weapon has always existed. It renders the hardened heart of a battle-ready soldier useless, clouds his mind, and makes his trigger finger hesitate in that crucial moment. That weapon, ladies and gentlemen, is, was, and evermore shall be sex-- the first true weapon of mass destruction.\"
My adversary had a face, or at least an ass, and now I was hesitant to kill her. As a man, I had always been taught to never hit a woman, that women deserved special treatment and compliments, even when they told you they didn’t want them, because secretly they were hoping you’d do it anyway. I’d rather sneak out of town around her than have to put a round through her. And she knew it.
Time was short. Having slow-motion sweat-stepped my way to the ground floor, probing every loose board with the toe of my boot for fear of tattling my position with a deafening pop, I eased the fire escape door open a careful inch and peered out. Heavy cover that once served as the city park was an easy 50 yards away. No more, no less.
If I could reach the tree line, I could cross the park before the sun broke through and take it all the way to the river. From there, I could find something that floated, lash myself to the bottom, and breathe through the rubber tubing in my med kit. Just another piece of flotsam, moving down stream. Fifty yards. My watch said I had less than an hour. I had a feeling she was punctual.
I took a deep breath, counted to three, and eased the door a little further. A squeak from a long-neglected hinge screamed in protest, and as I cleared the doorway hell-bent for the woods, something powerful punched the door right behind me, before ricocheting off into the morning sun.
I didn’t even think. I just ran like hell, trying to remember how long it took me to ram the slide open, thumb in a round, slam it home, get the weapon back to shoulder, and engage the scope on a moving target. Five seconds flat. How many of those had I already spent?
I zigged and zagged like crazy, my heart pounding, my feet slapping the pavement like concrete slippers. The sheltering green of the park was getting closer, and I poured it on, spending everything I had been saving, my legs exploding like pistons, arms churning like mad.
Four-point-five. Not bad.