All Dogs Go To Heaven/Part 2

## Part 2

Featured characters:

Ramon Riggs had lived up to his word. He’d given them more gear than they could have expected – Kevlar vests, a pair of stolen radios, night-vision binoculars. And of course, the RPG. Lunchmeat had started to affectionately call the weapon "the toy".

Duncan wouldn’t let him carry the toy. Lunchmeat figured maybe that was for the best.

They travelled across the bay on a motorized raft. Duncan played boat captain, piloting them through choppy water in complete darkness. Julie giggled every time they hit a wave and it seemed like they might be tossed over. Lunchmeat put an arm around her – half trying to keep her from falling out, half just to tell her she’d be okay. She seemed to appreciate it.

They stashed the raft beneath a collapsed wooden dock on the South edge of the island. Lunchmeat argued they should do a better job hiding it – this was their ride home after all – but Duncan was already scouting with his binoculars and Julie didn’t seem interested in helping. Lunchmeat couldn’t blame them – they were close and everyone was eager to finish this.

The island had been abandoned for some time. Rows of empty buildings. A boarded-up diner. They passed a pawn shop with its front blown out – it looked like the building had been gut shot and was  bleeding trash out onto the street. The cars, what few remained, had all been stripped.

Lunchmeat had never been in a proper warzone but he’d seen pictures – this was different. This was more like the pictures he’d seen of Prypiat in Ukraine – that infamous town evacuated in an instant when Chernobyl melted down.

This was a ghost town.

And making it worse were all the billboards plastered across the skyline. Ramon was right – Lunchmeat couldn’t tell what the hell Tythonic was actually selling.

*Live longer. Live Brighter. Live better,* the billboards read. What a bunch of horse shit.

The Tythonic billboards featured smiling old white people. Stock images of grandparents on sandy beaches. One billboard had a little girl blowing dandelions, cute enough she could have been on a cereal box. And the way she was blowing those dandelion seeds, it looked like they’d just float out across Haven forever.

In those first moments, navigating the empty city, Lunchmeat had an absurd thought: that the residents of this blighted island had not *left* – they’d been devoured. Eaten whole, bones and all, by these creepily-happy old white people. Shit, maybe the little girl with her dandelions even had a bite.

The thought played over and over in his head until he heard Duncan call out-

"Chopper! Get out of sight."

Lunchmeat looked to the skies and saw nothing. He froze unsure where to move. Duncan grabbed him by the collar and dragged him toward an abandoned grocery store.

Only then did he hear it – an unfamiliar thumping bass drum in the sky. Seconds later, the scout helicopter cruised overhead. No spotlight; the vehicle seemed like just a shadow passing through dark clouds.

No one moved. Lunchmeat was afraid to even take a breath. If these people had the ability to put a chip in his skull, who’s to say they couldn’t hear him breathing a quarter mile away…

It was Julie who spoke first. "You ever see a helicopter like that before? I mean, one you can’t barely hear?"

Duncan scanned for movement with the night-vision binoculars. "You don’t bring that kind of hardware out to chase drug dealers and vandals. Whatever they’re guarding, this is a high-value target."

It was meant as encouragement. But having seen the helicopter, Lunchmeat didn’t feel encouraged.

Their target was exactly where Ramon had said it would be – an abandoned steel mill at the center of the island. According to the leader of the cannibals, Tythonic trucks had been hauling equipment to the mill for months now. The cannibals had jacked a few of the trucks – this was back before Pillar had started shooting on sight – and they’d made off with what Ramon described as "fancy fucking computer shit". Ramon had considered selling the stolen equipment but it was harder to sell computers than methamphetamine and he assumed the machinery could be traced.

So after some healthy debate, Ramon had dumped the score into the bay.

But that was the spot, for sure, he’d told them. Whatever they’re doing on Haven, they were doing it in the old mill.

Spying on the building from a nearby rooftop, Lunchmeat was skeptical. He expected a circling helicopter. Maybe some motion-sensitive cameras and a kill truck – Ramon had spent an hour talking about the truck. He had expected some kind of ‘Battlegrounds fortress’.

But the mill was *not* a fortress. No visible security. And it was silent – well, *almost* silent. Several unmarked trailers were parked outside, cables running from rumbling generators into the depths of the building. Whatever they were doing inside, it seemed they needed extra power.

Duncan lead, staying low as he approached the mill. He was clearly in his element now, flashing hand signs that Lunchmeat and Julie didn’t understand.

From a rooftop window, they spotted a team of Pillar soldiers stationed inside. The men were heavily armored, their bodies packed into bullet-resistant plate. And the helmets – Jesus, they looked like something out of a movie. Like bounty hunters from space. Fortunately, only one of the four soldiers was actually *wearing* his helmet.

Space bounty hunters or not, these guys were clearly stuck on guard duty, trying to stay present despite being at the end of a graveyard shift.

"We need to be tactical here," Duncan whispered. It was hard to hear him over the rumble of the generators. "One of these guys discharges their weapon, we’re gonna have god knows how many more of them swarming. Plus the helicopter."

"Plus the truck," Lunchmeat said.

"Right, plus the truck. We have to move together. In unison. In *control*." He put emphasis on that last word, locking his eyes on Julie.

"Why you looking at me like that?" she said.

"Because this isn’t Sanhok, okay? We gotta do this smarter than what happened in the bunker."

Julie bit her lower lip, eyes suddenly unfocused. Like she was remembering.

Or trying to remember.

"What happened in the bunker?" she asked in a whisper.

"I’m serious, Julie," Duncan said.

But looking at her, Lunchmeat could tell she was serious too. "I can’t… really remember," she said.

"You don’t remember opening fire?"

"I don’t... no... I..."

"You don’t remember killing all those people?"

"Yeah, no… I remember *that*. I just… yeah, I thought you were talking about something else..."

She’s lying, Lunchmeat thought. She can’t remember it either. That frightened him – although it also made him feel less alone.

"It’s okay," Lunchmeat said. "Just like you said before. *We’re the hunters now*."

She nodded and giggled a bit – that’s how he knew she was okay. That she was back. And he believed what he said; these Pillar soldiers may have been better armed and better trained with fancy helmets…

But they still died like ordinary men.

Duncan moved first, getting as close as he could before sprinting at the nearest guard. He drove his combat knife into the man’s exposed ear with enough force that Lunchmeat would have sworn he also broke the man’s neck in the process. The other guards turned, clearly caught flat-footed, fumbling for their rifles. That was Lunchmeat and Julie’s cue.

They dropped from above. Lunchmeat hit his soldier square in the back and took him to the ground. He tried to get his hands around the man’s neck for a clean snap but the soldier’s space helmet made that impossible. So Lunchmeat ripped the helmet off and then stomped his boot on the man’s skull three times before he heard a crack and felt bone give way.

Duncan was already finishing off a second soldier. Lunchmeat turned to help Julie but she was doing fine – hanging off the last soldier’s back, like a murderous piggy-ride, choke-wire cutting deep into his throat. The man was trying to scream but Julie had cut off his airway.

The way she braced her body, used her knee and heaved back – she’d clearly done this before. And as unsettling as it was to watch a 5’4” woman kill a man this way, there was something centering about it. After how quiet she had been during their road trip… after the moment of fear when she said she couldn’t remember… well, it was good to see Julie be *Julie* again.

The man crumbled to the ground. Lunchmeat moved to check for a pulse but Julie was faster, slashing open his throat without a second thought. His open throat pulsed red like a broken sprinkler.

They stripped the guards of their gear. The weapons would do better than what they were already armed with. Lunchmeat tried on a helmet but he didn’t like the pressurized pop in his ears that the audio assist provided and the HUD made him dizzy.

They pulled dog tags from the corpses. As far as they could tell, these guys were soldiers for hire, recruited out of Eastern Europe just like Duncan had said. Lunchmeat wondered if they should have kept one alive. Maybe interrogate him, threaten to take out his teeth until he told them who ran the Battlegrounds and what the hell was happening on Haven.

Meh, these grunts wouldn’t have answers. And they didn’t have time to take out teeth.

They tossed the bodies inside an old smelter furnace and searched the mill.

It was underwhelming. Lunchmeat wasn’t certain what he had expected but this was not it. This was entirely too ordinary – a makeshift base of operations. Work lights had been strung up. Some field rations. A bucket in the corner where the soldiers had apparently been relieving themselves.

Lunchmeat felt himself getting angry. Maybe they should have listened to Malholtra. At the very least they could have been getting drunk in the mountains – not accidentally kicking over a pot that a bunch of Serbian psychopaths had been pissing in and-

"Guys. I found something," Julie called out.

She had trailed the cables from the generators – tracked it across the length of the mill to the building next door. That’s where she found the door.

The construction was new. From what they could tell, it was an access point to a stairwell that led below ground. Below the mill.

There was a small sensor pad in the door about the size of an Ipad. Lunchmeat and Duncan fussed with it for a good minute, tapping and swiping. They were still messing with the tablet when Julie came back, dragging one of the dead Pillar soldiers, his body dusted in a mix of blood and ash.

"It’s a palm reader," she said. "Try his hand."

Lunchmeat slapped his dead hand against the sensor pad. For a moment, nothing. Then the tablet lit up and a small green light blinked. An internal mechanism whirred as the door unlocked.

They shared a look – none of them had expected it to work.

Lunchmeat pulled open the door. Beyond, a concrete stairwell led down into the dark.

Weapons readied, they descended. Two flights down the stairs opened up into a large hangar – a labyrinth of server towers that blinked and chirped. It sounded like they had climbed into a hive.

Was this it? Was it all beamed *here?* For what? To be stored on computer equipment like a hoarder’s collection of old newspapers?

Looking over the place, Lunchmeat realized he didn’t even know what a server *was*. It had something to do with the internet, right? But if they torched the whole place – would that do *anything*?

They reached the bottom and began navigating the maze. No markings. No way to tell one tower from another. Just wires and cables and blinking green and yellow lights.

"Look, at the end..." Duncan whispered.

At the end of the maze there was a workstation. Almost like an air traffic control tower or mission control; the kind of place you might run a moon landing. A dozen screens played what might have been body camera footage. First person video beamed right from…

Right from Sanhok.

Yes, this was body camera footage recorded from the Battlegrounds. From *their* Battleground.

There was a man sitting at the workstation. He was East-Asian, maybe in his fifties – it was hard to tell with the scars on his face. And he was missing an arm at the elbow, his shirt tied off in a casual knot.

The man turned to see his visitors. His eyes lit up in surprise. But it was more than that.

It was admiration.

He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it and said nothing.

Duncan already had his rifle raised. Julie leveled her pistol at him. Lunchmeat didn’t raise his weapon – this man had seen violence, sure, but Lunchmeat didn’t sense any threat from him.

"Who are you?" Julie spat out.

"I am the archivist, Miss Skels," he said calmly.

She looked to Lunchmeat for help. He shrugged. So she took three big steps forward, almost close enough to place the gun to his head.

"What’s going on here, old man?" She asked. And then, realizing, "and how do you know who I am?"

"I know who all of you are." He scanned the group, his look of admiration fading to confusion. "Is Malholtra not with you? Has something happened to her?"

Duncan cocked his rifle dramatically. "Stop asking questions and start talking. Who are you?"

"I already told you, Mister Slade. I am the archivist. That was what I asked for. *That* was my prize. I truly wish you all had stayed on the island. I think you could have won. Like me."

Those final two words hung in the room for a long moment. *Like me.*

Lunchmeat looked over the scars. His amputated arm.

"I won Vikendi. 2009."

## Other Parts

* Prologue
* Part 1
* **Part 2**
* Part 3
* Part 4
* Epilogue