This Mortal Coil Read Online Free PDF Page A

line.
    “ Will do, Oz, will do. Over .”
    “Hear, hear. Now head on back to the Hub, get yourselves some chow and shuteye.”
    Willem and Theresa stood still as statues, watching and waiting for just the right moment to catch the spotters off guard. Theresa wanted to go as soon as he clicked off the radio, but something told Willem to wait. Sure enough, the silence was shortly punctuated by the drag of a zipper and the rustle of fabric. One of the spotters emerged, working at his fly as if he were about to take a leak over the edge. His hands shot up quickly enough when Willem and Theresa stuck their rifles in his face. Theresa raised a finger to her lips while Willem crept forward; the spotter nodded.
    “Geez, Oz!” the young man inside the tent protested when Willem yanked open the flap. “Give a guy a few minutes to rub one out, huh?”
    “Sorry, kid. Not Oz.”
    Whipping his head back, the younger man’s face dropped as he beheld Willem’s rifle pointed square at him. “Oh, fuck.” Swallowing hard, he raised his hands. “What do you want?”
    “First, zip yourself up,” Willem said. “Then come out of the tent nice and slowly.”
    The young man did as he was told, emerging carefully. “You’re making a big mistake. We’re not the ones you want, okay? We’re just spotters.”
    “There’s no mistake,” Theresa reassured him, grinning grimly. “We want all of you. Each and every one.”
    “We can help you. We’ll tell you where they are, when they move out and go to ground. We know everything, just please don’t kill us.”
    “Shut the fuck up, Lucas,” the older one hissed.
    Willem had heard enough out of the both of them. Raising the stock of his rifle abruptly, he struck the one called Oswald across the face with it, surprising even Theresa as the man collapsed in a semi-conscious heap. “Yeah, and just how to covertly signal them that you’ve been captured,” he spat down at Oswald’s limply twitching form. “We’re not going to kill you. Not yet. First we’re going to make you watch while we kill all your friends.” He gave Oswald a quick kick to the stomach for good measure before looking to Lucas. “Then… well, we’ll talk about that when the time comes.”
    “Damn, Will. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
    Willem lifted his eyes, smiling darkly in response. “Something tells me that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Now let’s get these two tied up.”
    Theresa nodded. First, they made Lucas bind and gag Oswald, then Theresa covered Willem while he secured Lucas. With that done, they turned to inventorying the contents of the tent. Two earpieces. Two eyepieces. A book of ciphered coordinates laying open alongside a gridded, otherwise unlabeled map. Intriguing, but ultimately useless without the cipher to marry up the correct coordinates with the map.
    For all that was worth, several items of far more immediate value stood out. A battery-powered space heater; jugs of purified water; rations of bread, dried fruit, even a few strips of leathery meat. The space heater in particular felt like nothing short of a godsend. Huddling around its warmth, they traded sips from the jugs and supped on the rations, never once bemoaning their lack of taste or difficult consistency. As far as they were concerned it was a feast fit for royalty, or at the very least kindred spirits.
    “You know what the weirdest part of all this is?” Theresa wondered as they picked at the remains of the makeshift meal. Willem could only shrug by way of response. “I barely know you—hell, I barely know myself—but somehow this seems really familiar.”
    He tilted his head, meeting the observation with a quizzical narrowing of his eyes. “What does? Fighting for our lives?”
    Laughing airily, she nudged at his shoulder. “No, you dope. I mean, this. Eating together. I feel like we’ve done this before.”
    There was a quiet, almost dangerous intimacy underpinning the moment; dangerous in the sense