Fireteam Delta, J. Halpin [online e book reading .txt] 📗

coming. They had guns, too. He aimed at the closest man and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Nothing happened. Right, his gun was empty.

His name again. They weren’t trying to hurt him like the wolves. Why? Why were they waiting?

“Summers! Put the gun down!” Nowak yelled.

He considered the man. He had a gun. Why shouldn’t Summers have one, too?

“We’re your friends, man. We’re just trying to help you!” The woman spoke this time.

Friends? Right, he remembered them. He recognized them.

“Summers, please. Put it down,” Nowak continued.

He stared at the man for a long moment. The gun was useless, anyway. He let it fall to the snow.

Nowak stepped forward hesitantly. A part of him wanted to tear the man’s throat out. He repressed the urge.

They were his friends, weren’t they?

“Summers?”

Right. He was Summers.

Slowly, Nowak reached for his gun. He let him take it.

“Can you walk?” Nowak asked.

Summers nodded. Nowak placed a hand on his back. Mechanically, he started forward, Nowak guiding him.

He only then realized how wet his face was. He looked at his hands—red. Right, the blood. He was hungry. He was still hungry. But these were his friends. He wanted to sleep.

They took him to a car. The Humvee? Before he knew it, he was in the back seat. It was comfortable, somehow. Familiar.

“I need you to keep your shit together for a little longer, buddy. We can’t stay here, all right?” Nowak’s voice was distant, but he understood.

He needed to sleep. Then, he’d decide what to do next.

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“You feeling better?” Cortez asked.

“Yes.” The answer came out as a growl, which was unsettling even to him.

“You haven’t blinked in three hours.”

“I. Feel. Better.”

Cortez just stared at Summers.

“Blink, motherfucker.”

Summers’ head turned almost mechanically toward Cortez. He forced his eyes closed, then open. That seemed to satisfy her.

Summers had slept for the better part of a day. It was a truly dead sleep, which was for the best, all things considered. They’d decided to push through the night just to avoid running into any more surprises. The forest was still relatively empty of any kind of wildlife, despite the distance they’d put between themselves and the town.

“Leave him be,” Nowak called back. He’d taken over the chore of driving while Summers dealt with himself. Logan and Asle sat beside him, both staring with concern.

“You’re looking less . . . freaky at least,” Adams said.

Summers hadn’t noticed, but much like the wolves he’d slaughtered, his eyes were beyond bloodshot when they’d found him. Now, it just looked like he had a bad hangover. Felt like it, too. Apparently, it had taken the better part of two days to find him. Running in circles for that long was tough on the body. He wasn’t even sure what he’d done under the effects of the fog.

All he could remember were vague feelings of absolute, unrelenting rage. Given how much blood he’d been covered in when they’d found him, Summers could parse out at least some of what he’d been up to. He was just glad his friends were up in a tree for the worst of it. They’d only figured out where he was after he’d fired off a few shots.

It was easier for him to think now, but he still wasn’t back to his old self. He felt trapped in his own head, sort of like his brain was working on low power. His thoughts were coming, but far more slowly than they should be. The fact that he was aware of that at all was probably a good sign.

Cortez looked over at Asle.

“You sure you don’t know anything else?”

Asle looked at Summers for a long moment, shoulders tense. “No.”

Asle shifted in her seat. She was nervous. Even Summers could tell at this point. She shrank back as Summers’ head turned in her direction. There was something else there, too, something besides fear.

“Asle?” Summers started, then stopped as Asle scooted closer to Logan, eyes wide. His voice was coming out harsher than he’d intended.

Even Nowak could tell something was wrong with Asle. They’d questioned her more than a few times while Summers was asleep. Now, with him awake, she looked at him almost guiltily.

“Asle, please,” Nowak started. “If you know anything, anything at all, tell us.”

Asle seemed to consider this for long a moment. Nowak was about to press again when she finally spoke.

“I heard stories about fog,” Asle murmured. “The man, General, liked story a lot. Asked about it a lot. Brought people to talk about it. When I saw fog, I remembered. He . . . ordered not to talk about it. Not with anyone.”

“What?” Cortez yelled. She sounded pissed.

They’d assumed Asle knew about the poison because it was just some weird quirk of this world. If she had known beforehand . . .

Logan held up a hand to calm the others and looked down at the girl. “Asle, did you know we were going to run into that?”

“No!” Asle said quickly. She shrank back at Cortez’s obvious skepticism. “Thought they were stories. General ask people about places near town a long time ago. Mountains, lakes—not know where . . . not know we here.”

Nowak looked back at Summers. “The general mentioned a drug in his messages. It might be why the 63rd came to our base. All he’d need to do is narrow down an area that matched the description he got from the locals.”

Cortez looked back at Logan. “You were in the 63rd. If she knew about this, I’d bet my ass you did, too. Or you really think we’re buying that whole need-to-know shit?”

“He didn’t know,” Summers muttered. His eye twitched, almost imperceptibly.

“What makes you so sure? Guy was with the group who kidnapped a girl and expects us