Silent-Sniper

Death

Kleist awoke on his fortieth birthday, he'd had a moment of clarity that didn't often occur to him through the masmia of hatred that usually fogged his mind. He'd long ago lost the chance at a normal life through the sights, sounds, and episodes that had inspried his ideals, His beliefs had brought him to this moment, nothing but a short man, a short and filthy man stinking in the basement of the lowest apartment in brickstown. In two days he boarded a train to Zigursky Penitentiary. Kleist enjoyed the ride amongst people he hated, even though his roughhewn garb made him freakish amidst the crowd, he watched the rare few happy people going about their lives, seemingly uninterrupted by the criminal element he had fought so ruthlessly against. It almost made it seem as if his fight was confined to him alone, and for once he enjoyed his walk from the train, everything was quiet. There was breeze and there were birds chirping, there was no sound of automatic fire, no sneer of alleyway predator, no screams.

Kleist approached the gate and the guard that attempted to identify him took a bullet tot he knee. Then another when he fell. Climbing the wall on hook-bound rope, he loaded his rifle with rubber and the men in their towers fell silently into their posts. Inside the prison, his bony hands pulled back at the cowl, exposing pasty sun-untouched ears. He opened them to the backwards community of innmates, as he breached the canteen, it was the 'superhuman' in his reflexes that dropped the guards on his way. When he dropped the duffel, he had already set a protective timer for his exit. The hood went back up, feet on concrete, door after door down the stained and broken lucite hallway. The blast propelled him out the last set, and he could feel bone splint and crack beneath the plate carrier and ballistic mask. It was a physical and 'superhuman' effort to drag himself to his feet, to drag his useless leg to the concrete bank on the far side of the prison yard. The detonation should have killed him, but it was with superhuman rage that the rifle came up, against a crux of elbow, down at the survivors emerging in the mid-collapse of the prison.

Moments later he stood on the embankment of concrete, desperate hands on the bare of the smooth concrete walls, their makeshift weapons clicked and clattered with broken and battered fingernails. Cracks of the rifle broke open air. The surge of prisoners pushed its way up the slope, a stinking tide of unwashed flesh and furious face, eventually reached the top of the embankment. Ammo depleted he turned the rifle around in his hands, his gloved palms curling about burning barrel, he barely felt his skin crackle and twist when he smashed the weapon into the head of the nearest face to clear the breach. The tide of orange made it to the top, and were moments from surrounding him.

The pain in his burning hand dulled on the surface the lone grenade at his belt. He felt the cool breeze against his aching body, the edges of the cowl fluttering against his cheeks, the smell of the crisp spring air polluted only by his sweat and blood stinging at his smothered nostrils. He could almost hear the striker spring landing upon the detonator, then he was no more.