But Roland did not like fighting normal humans. He’d hoped the infantry coming up behind the armored troopers would run like hell once he popped their vanguard. But instead, they’d insisted on a fight and started shooting at him with very large guns. One explosive munition had hit nine yards ahead of his position and the other had impacted close enough to pepper Roland’s torso and face with ­shrapnel.

So, regretfully, he charged the enemy. The Martyrs shot back, they hit him a few times, but Roland paid their bullets as much mind as he would a mild rain.

He drew close enough for visual contact. These Martyrs were a motley sight. Several of them fought shirtless with white crosses daubed across their chests. Most of them wore body armor, very little of it modern. Roland saw a lot of old pre-war plate carriers and surplus police vests. That crap wouldn’t stop military-grade rifle rounds. Although, since the only weapon in Roland’s hand was a big-ass wrench, how these men were armored hardly mattered.

They were mostly armed with old M4s and a smattering of newer assault rifles probably pilfered from the Republic of Texas. Fifty men. Six technicals. Two drone carriers. Roland hit their skirmishing line before the teams on the recoilless rifles, his first target, could reload.

Roland’s wrench broke jaws and orbital bones, it cracked pelvises and shattered thighs. He dispatched the rifle teams and then danced through the onrushing mob of militia like some sort of compound-fracture-dispensing ballerina. And as he fought, Roland felt the familiar sunlight warmth of serotonin flood his synapses. He remembered a little of how the Army had explained the battle drugs now flowing through his brain: “a guarantee of sustained aggression.” The longer he fought, the harder it would be for him to stop fighting, and to avoid killing.

Roland felt his self control begin to fade as he knocked out his dozenth Martyr. He started swinging harder. His blows increasingly connected with clavicles instead of coccyxes, and jaws instead of elbows. His hindbrain warned him as the kill likelihood estimates jumped from four to six percent, up to twenty, thirty, forty percent. He felt his conscience fade beneath the euphoric red haze of narcotic splendor.

Before he knew it, the whole platoon of martyrs was either on the ground or fleeing for the relative safety of their technicals. Roland laughed a madman’s laugh, tickled that they thought a bunch of old Toyota trucks with machine guns in the beds might slow him down. He put a fist through the engine block of one and ate a burst of .50 caliber fire from the other as he pivoted and launched his wrench through the driver’s-side window. The improvised missile connected with the face of the driver, who spun his wheel hard to the left. The truck flipped forward onto its cabin. Something about the wet crunch it made sounded so familiar–