tales of pegasus, installment le first

 

pegasus was getting tired of the constant bleating of car alarms and strobes firing off the security blimp klieg lights overhead. from his vantage at the top of the stairs leading up to the broken arms apartment complex, he could see a few of those mutants milling about near the abandoned homeless camp underneath the old highway overpass. he dropped the smoldering cigarette and crushed it underneath a casual boot, then set the sonic cannon to kill.

sure enough, a few of those creeps began to walk through the ragged hole in the chain link fence and cross over the road leading to the accessway. a cab had to gun its engines and let loose with the electric to get through the herd. pegasus doubted they would get through the main gate, but these days you couldn't be sure. he heard a consignment truck of military hardware had gone missing in the thirteenth district, and they might have gotten their hands on some real weaponry.

sure enough, he was right for the second time today. a couple of those bastards had some kind of enhancement. maybe exoskeletons. a pair of jump boots lit up in the back of the pack and pegasus found himself hoping he wasn't right anymore today.

 

the auto-flamers at the gate took out a pack or two, black smoke rising up from the crispy writhing barbeque. pegasus started to notice the smell of flesh drifting across the parking lot and he triggered the faceplate in his helmet.

 

then jumpboots landed on top of a luxury sedan near the visitor parking, crumpling a polymer hood and falling off with a thud. as the creep scrambled up from the asphalt, pegasus could see a bloody smear across his smiling face. with a flick of his wrist, pegasus let him  loose with the cannon and watched the creep's intestines explode out through his midsection with a terrifying shriek.

 

he still counted two enhanced crossing the parking lot, moving fast. he resisted the temptation to hit the panic button. fredy would never let him live it down.

 

he hit exoskeleton number one in midstride, narrowly managing to squash the creep without exploding the windshield of a bmw parked behind the target. then creep number two was about twenty feet from him. at such close range, he couldn't help but get a little vibration from the cannon himself. he felt his teeth rattle and his bowels loosen as target number two evaporated in a cloud of skin fragments and liquid stool, misting the air like some sick dream.

 

he was smoking a cigarette when fredy showed up, twenty minutes later, to relieve him now that his shift was over.

 

"you watch the game last night?"

 

"no. you?"

 

"no."

 

that was about all he got outta fredy.

inside the broken arms, staff side, pegasus made his way up the stairs and into a hallway. twentieth-century rock music thudded stupidly behind some nearby doorway. it had been a long shift. he decided to spool some digit and then he would hit the sack.