Heart of the Resonant- the Soldier's Tale

by B. C. Handler

  There are always nut jobs that take advantage of a situation; look at the LA riots. Being surrounded by tanks and soldiers armed to the teeth will snuff out the crazy.

  Chatter stopped, all of us waiting—and hoping—that we won’t have to start firing in a suburb. The engine hummed steadily, the sound I’ve grown to appreciate, a sound that helped me find my chi or whatever. The white noise steadied me while I looked down the street. Things looked pretty rough, the expected aftermath of droves of people scurrying away like rats on a sinking ship.

  Must be an absolute clusterfuck downtown.

  As we moved forward and I kept a keen eye on point, the red reticle in my field of view jumped ahead a quarter inch. Then down an eighth of an inch. The ballistic fire-control computer updates thirty times every second, so the reticle always looked stationary, even if we’re hauling ass after a moving target.

  “Gunner,” heath’s voice crackled, “notice anything strange?”

  “My reticle is having a seizure,” I replied as the red aperture blinked from existence.

  “Computer is telling me barometric pressure is nine thousand, nine hundred and sixty-seven torr, and the temperature keeps fluctuating. Either we just went to Venus, or something’s dicking with our systems.”

  Heath pulled the receiver from the radio and wedged it between his helmet and ear. While he did that, I went over my checks, the process committed to memory like lyrics to my favorite song.

  I’ll be Around by The Spinners, by the way.

  As I worked, the lead tank and Humvee ahead stopped. Heath cursed at the same time and slammed the receiver off the radio. Ahead, the other tank commander climbed out and waved a closed fist in the air.

  As Heath was climbing up and opening the tank latch, he said, “Driver, park it. Gunner, ass glued to seat. Radio does dick, and all the sensors are functioning as well as a retard who dropped acid, so hands off the fire controls. Loader,” he said, jerking his head to Judge, “hop up and man the secondary.”

  Judge opened his hatch, bringing the M240 on the skate mount into position.

  The primary sight wasn’t working properly, but I could still see ahead. Heath went over to the Humvee, the other tank commander coming the opposite way. They were exchanging words with the sergeant commanding the foot soldiers. If our radio went down, then that must be true for all the other units. I’d imagine runners were going to be set up to keep information flowing.

  Gunfire erupted up ahead. Soldiers took point and trained their guns somewhere up ahead. The open hatch informed me of the pops, but I couldn’t discern direction. From where everyone was sighted, it was somewhere around the corner.

  Heath scrambled back up the tank and charged a round on the fifty mounted in front of his hatch.

  “Driver,” Heath barked over our line, “gradual right and level out, stop on my command.” The tank veered towards the curb on the opposite side of the street and lurched forward until we had a line of fire away from everyone else. “Stop.”

  Heath called out to me about the turret. It was mostly broken hisses, but I got the gist of the order. I rotated left until I heard an indiscernible crackle as the stop order. A precaution for engagement, but I’m hoping not to fire the gun without computer assistance. A shell could easily veer off a couple hundred yards, but my main weapon, for now, will be the coaxial M240. If we’re engaging an out of control riot, it’ll be more than enough.

  The fifty of the lead tank was going off at targets around Harving Avenue then, the heavy caliber fire sending thumps in my chest.

  Looking through the viewport, the foot soldiers across the street away from the lead tank started falling back. A form leaped onto one of them, and the two started wrestling. All I could see was the form of someone decked out in dark grey pounding on the soldier pinned underneath. The others in the party looked like they were about to help, then started opening fire on the two.

  “What the fuck?” I yelled. “Heath, did you see that? They just opened fire on a downed—”

  I fell short once I saw more similarly dressed forms pounce on the group like a bunch of animals. The lead tank was fired nonstop at this point. Shock and anger lanced through me as I watched fellow service members opening fire on their own with civilians in the mix, blasting away with complete abandonment.

  As I took in the scene, a streak of white ran through the street so bright that I pulled away from my aperture, the light photo-bleaching my retinas and leaving a blotch of dark in my vision. A breath later, the crack of thunder sounded before an explosion shook our tank.

  Heath and Judge and dipped into the turret, both of them rubbing their eyes and shouting off curses. Peeking through my aperture, I saw the lead tank was nothing more than a smoking shell billowing black smoke into the streets, the entire turret laying lopsided and glowing red twenty feet behind the hull.

  “Mother of fucking fuck!” Heath roared as he dropped into the tank.

  “What the hell was that!” Judge cried.

  More than shocked, I didn’t say anything and kept my eyes glued to the scene of destruction.

  The M1A1 could take direct artillery and rounds from other tanks as if they were love taps. The hull down the block was just a smoldering ribcage of twisted metal. The turret had a glowing rent that looked like it cut through several inches of steel like a hot knife through butter. An anti-tank missile could cripple an Abrams, but certainly not obliterate it like a bullfrog with an M-80 rammed up its kiester.

  No civis were packing that sort of firepower on hand.

  The Humvee ahead sent dozens of tracer rounds into the smoke cloud above the tank. Amidst the cloud, a solid, dark form was hovering in space. A drone?

  A Red Dawn scenario?

  “Gunner!” Heath’s voice crackled. “Sight target at ten o'clock, chopper. Loader, missile, HE.”

  The computer was down, but the hydraulic system for the turret still worked. Using the telescopic sight bore-sighted to the main gun, I got a beam on the target, now receiving a lot of heat from the infantry on top of the Humvee’s gunner.

  Target was big, maybe six feet across, and maintaining a steady altitude. It had to be packing some sophisticated armor if it still hung in the air after taking concentrated fire from a fifty.

  Judge ran through the process of loading, retrieving a HE round, ramming it into the breach, and slamming it home for my ready. A high explosive round may have been much, especially in a residential area, but Heath was holding no punches for the unidentified aircraft.

  “Identified, tracking!” I barked, keeping sights through the smoke.

  Target idled forth, tracer rounds skipping of whatever the surface and flying off into the air like shooting stars. Nerves strung up like guitar strings, I awaited command.

  My nerves turned to confusion when the UFO parted from the smoke and hovered down the block. One figure in a dark cloak stood atop of a… a… floating carpet? It was rectangular, the fabric a vivid crimson that contrasted sharply against the grey buildings of the block and the blackened smoke.

  Looking through my sight, I was dumbfounded at the scene by the bizarre character. And held at its side was a large, blocky scepter.

  Did carbon monoxide seep into the turret?

  Everyone within the hull took pause. Heath, no doubt, was stunned that our target was no drone or chopper. What was just as bizarre was that the thing took heat from a fifty, and the rounds just veered off of some unseen wall with discharges of visible electrical arcs.

  The figure at the edge of the carpet pointed its scepter at the Humvee caught between a reload and sent forth a long arch of electricity like a silk thread of a spider caught in a breeze. The arc zipped down, then one second later, a blinding bolt of lightning bathed everything in white.

  I pulled myself away from the telescopic eyepiece, the only thing perceptible through my right eye was just white, purple, and black. A monstrous crack and boom shook our tank.

  A kick to the back of my head got me strai
ght.

  “Fire on my command, you fucker!” Heath roared, abandoning his headset and yelling the old fashioned way.

  Using my left eye, I sighted and caught a brief glimpse of the destruction. The Humvee was gone, and the only thing that remained was a smoking crater.

  “Fire!” Heath ordered.

  “On the way!”

  The tank kicked and lobbed a round going well over fourteen hundred meters per second. The exploding apartment complex down the block confirmed I missed. More alarming, the floating figure turned towards us.

  Protocol called for Judge to keep loading and for me to keep firing until Heath called a ceasefire. Though in the space of time it took chemical messages to cross the synaptic gap, I feared we weren’t going to get another shot.

  In the five seconds it took Judge to ready a round, Heath was barking orders. The thing on the carpet had its scepter aimed at us.

  “Short-left one-half target form, add two target forms—Fire!”

  “On the way!”

  Just as I went to send the round home with the correction, a zigzagging arch danced towards us.

  I went blind, felt the tank kick, then felt another kick that was like an eighteen-wheeler t-boning me as if I were in a sedan. An explosion deafened me, locking me into a state of panic where I couldn’t hear, see, and not quite feel what the hell was happening.

  I swam in an ocean of destitute, my sense of self a million miles away.

  Is this death?

  The world came rushing back as a painful crack on my cheek delivered the unpleasant, but comforting sense of pain.

  Judge loomed over me, one hand holding my collar, the other primed back for another bitch-slap.

  “Are you there?” he demanded.

  I looked around; I was out of my seat in the central space of the turret, Heath gone. Turning back to Judge, I nodded.

  His tense expression softened some, but the fear was still there. Licking the sweat that accumulated over his lips, he said, “Grab your rifle and gear; we’re ditching the tank.”

  I nodded again, mechanically, his words not quite registering. Judge crawled out of the hatch, me following him in a dazed crawl with my rifle in hand. He climbed over to the bustle rack on the rear and began unfastening our equipment. Heath was unmounting the M240.

  It dawned on me then that I must’ve blackout for a few minutes.

  Turning over to the business end of the main gun, I saw that our aerial attacker was gone. However, at the front of the tank in a rough angle was a glowing streak of molten asphalt. The streak continued on the tank and rendered a molten void in the glacis plate that damn near cut off an entire chunk of the hull and treads.

  Belatedly, I remembered Ji-hyun. My senses came flooding back, and I attempted to scramble over the turret. Heath jerked me back by my vest.

  “She’s dead,” he said evenly.

  The molten void where the driver’s hatch was should've been obvious enough; I just didn’t want it to believe it.

  “Fuck,” I cursed and went over to gather my kit.

  The path of destruction continued across the street to a leveled building. The red brick structure that stood at the corner of the alley we crossed through was nothing more than a pile of rubble. The force was enough to cause the neighboring building to partially collapse, blocking off our route to the convoy on the street over.

  Judge and I hopped down with bags on our backs and the extra ammo cans for the machine gun from Heath. No exchanging of words between us. Everyone did what they had to. It was our way of mourning.

  Ji was a firecracker with a mouth. She and I had a bit of a hurdle to overcome because she lacked a filter, and I had no problem calling out her shit. Even so, we bonded over our two years of service. No matter how different two people are, combat always forges a connection stronger than even blood.

  She was gone, but we were still here. The next order of business was to regroup and figure out what the hell had attacked us.

  As Heath went to hand off the gun, he did a double-take down the street. Naturally, Judge and I followed his gaze. Whatever blast that took out the lead tank had also killed the troops nearby; the same being true for when the Humvee got decimated. The charred husks billowed smoke like an oil refinery. And with the resulting dust cloud from the rubble, visibility down the street was limited. But amidst the haze was movement on the sidewalk about a hundred feet out.

  Nodding to each other, we shouldered our weapons and formed a firing line.

  Safeties disengaged; our guns were hot.

  Before Heath had the chance to call out friendly, something emerged from the smoke in a sprint. A few seconds of lag went through our collective heads as we saw… something race towards us. As it neared and made animalistic sounds, the M240 roared. Shells clattered on the hull and spilled near my boots as Heath unloaded. The thing took a chestful while it covered ten yards more, then tumbled across the ground a few times before coming to a complete rest.

  Judge and I stood as still as mannequins. Seconds rolled by before we shared a look, then went back to staring.

  “What,” Heath said, jumping down from the tank, machine gun still at the ready, “in the actual fuck, is that?”

  Gun still sighted, I said, “Cover my six.” Slowly, like iron plates had replaced my soles, I approached the… the… monster.

  The first thing to come to mind was a psychotic civilian that stripped all their clothes and charged in a blind fit of madness. But the thing balled up down the street was too much of a sickly grey. It wasn’t dust, mud, or clay; its skin was a weathered grey like on ancient sculptures. The thing looked human, but the stretched arms and disgusting muscle proportions said otherwise. The final nail in the coffin was the ooze leaking out of this thing: black, gooey slime-like oil from a car way past its change.

  I slowed once I was within a few feet. The thing unmoving in the black pool of its blood. Cautiously, I nudged it over with my boot, and it rolled onto its back, its blank, wax-like visage leering at the heavens.

  A while back, I saw the movie Pan’s Labyrinth. There was this sickly monster character called the Pale Man that the main character, Ofelia, had to take a dagger from to help her mother. This creature looked like the alpha version of that thing, albeit looking like someone took a clothing iron and smoothed its face flat. The fingers were disproportionately long, too; this thing packed some claws that looked like it could shred meat like tissue paper.

  I lowered my rifle once Judge and Heath joined on either side of me.

  Judge signed the cross. “Good God.”

  “I think I made the right decision,” Heath said, his voice distant.

  “Definitely not a civi,” I agreed, shock making it feel like I was in a nightmare.

  Distant growls pulled us from our temporary reprieve of psychosis. Stepping from the hazy cloud down the street was more humanoid things.

  A lot more.

  Chapter 2

  Spent casings from Judge flew into my face as we took point behind a dumpster and picked off any monsters Heath missed. The repetitive bursts of fire tore away at my eardrums due to the confined space of the alley we retreated down.

  At first sight of all those bastards, we turned tail and ran, hoping we could make it back on the opposite street to get some backup. We only made it halfway down the block when more of the naked slendermen cut us off. Heath made the split decision to go down the alley of the other street over. Whatever the hell these things were, they were fast, and they could take some abuse.

  One chose to drop after I loaded a burst of eight rounds into its chest, forcing me to a reload. Using the alley to choke their numbers worked in our favor, Heath making quick work of firing into the tumbling group as we backed out and onto the other end. However, the more and more we fired, the more and more funneled in like a bunch of feral cats when someone shook the Meow Mix bag.

  Shortly after our engagement began, more gunfire and explosions went off a few blocks away. It sounded like
the convoy was getting a lot of action. Hopefully there weren’t more of those floating people.

  There was no time to make sense of that scene. If I hadn’t obliterated the figure with a direct hit, I would’ve assumed I was hallucinating on fumes or something.

  We hit the other end of the alley, and Judge got a grenade ready.

  “Heath, pull back,” Judge yelled over the near-never-ending hail of gunfire. Heath dumped more rounds and raced back with me around the corner. “Frag out!”

  Seconds after it left his hand, the grenade exploded, sending a shock through my molars and a cascading rain of wayward shrapnel.

  We turned heel and ran with no clear destination. Judge and I just followed Heath. Being at rank at E-six staff sergeant, his orders were supreme over our squad. What’s left of it.

  All the commotion seemed to draw out all the creeps from the woodworks because as we got down the block, another group of those things cut us off.

  Taking only a second to think, Heath veered off to the right and sent us through another alley between two residential buildings, this one narrower. Turning sideways, we shuffled through until we got to the other side.

  Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch—

  That was the only thing on my mind when a quick look in either direction revealed more of those things. We had a very slim lead.

  “Pawnshop,” Heath roused, making a beeline for Windycity EZPawn.

  The door was kicked in, but the windows had reinforced wire and steel bars. Understanding his meaning, Judge and I raced towards the entrance and followed our leader.

  The interior showroom was dark, even more so with all the shit on display in the window blocking the sunlight. Heath wrestled with a tall antique wardrobe. Together, we gave him a hand and wedged the piece of furniture in front of the door. It was almost a perfect fit, so with a heavy push, we wedged it into the frame, the wood cracking as the wardrobe locked into place.

  Wanting to be extra secure, I grabbed a bunch of random shit like old guitar amps, little shelves, and other odds and ends.