by Maxey, Phil
Ant ran up to her. “What was it this time?”
She smiled. “Some kind of giant porcupine.”
“Did you talk to it?” said the boy excitedly.
Abbey laughed. “You know that’s not how it works, do you talk to yours?”
The boy looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure. I do in my head, but not out loud.”
A large explosion sounding like it was just outside made the building shudder, and Ant looked concerned.
Fiona put her hand on his shoulder. “Hey why don’t we see if we can find any food.”
*****
The attacks on the camp had increased. What was once a few attacks during the early hours, was now multiple attacks throughout the day and night.
Zach stood on a segment of the eastern wall during the late morning. The wind made if feel even colder than it looked. He scanned the largely flat partially frozen landscape he had passed through a number of times with a scope. Hundreds of E.L.F’s meandered across the distant fields and hills in the walls direction.
“That’s a whole lot of nasty,” said Bass standing by him.
“The strange thing is that there are different species but they’re mostly not attacking each other, they are just attacking the wall once they get here.”
“Like there’s something inside the walls that bugs them.”
“Yup. Raj mentioned something about maybe there’s a link between the increase in attacks and those affected, but they didn’t know what the connection was.”
“How is Abbey?”
Zach wanted to be honest and tell him that she’s getting by, but he didn’t know who he could trust with the knowledge that they had been talking daily, even someone like Bass, who in any other situation he would trust with his life. “They don’t tell me much, but the last time they did they said she’s okay.”
“Any idea how long she’s going to be in there?”
“No idea.”
Bass glanced at Zach. “Must be hard.”
“I’m not the only person in this situation, everyone in that factory has family on the outside.”
“It’s not right. Those people didn’t do anything, Abbey and Cal saved our asses.”
Zach nodded.
“I better get back to the Core, they got me doing some training of new recruits. I’ll see if I can put a good word in and get you off this wall duty.”
“Honestly, I kind of like it up here. I can see what’s coming. Give my best to Sophia.”
Bass smiled, patted Zach on the back and left walking along the wall and through the door to one of the gun emplacements.
Zach looked back out towards the east. I’m sure there’s more every time I look.
By the early afternoon there had been a major attack on the south wall, and a number of minor events along the others. By late afternoon his shift had finished and he was walking back into his silent house near the lake. Even in the light of the setting sun it was impossible not to see the clothes and empty boxes strewn across the hardwood floor. Picking his way through the clutter, he picked up a small paint chipped alarm clock, set it to 10 pm, put his radio and keys down on the table next to it, and collapsed on the sofa.
A loud crash woke him. He sat up in complete darkness, his forehead damp with sweat. A flash lit up the kitchen windows from across the lake in the metropolitan area. Then another Flash. The sounds of the camps sirens could be heard intermingled with the sound of battle. Blinking a few times he got to his feet and started walking towards the light show that was being put on in the distance. Tripping over a box, he stepped into the kitchen and watched the multiple lines of crimson kris-crossing the skyscrapers. He could also just about make out the dark shapes, swooping in and amongst them. Another loud crash came from the front of the house. Like being snapped out of a dream, he whirled around to face the living room. Picking up his M4 as he passed the sofa, he moved closer to the windows, pulled the curtains carefully back a few inches and looked out into blackness.
His radio on the table crackled, making him jump. “Captain Felton, you are urgently required at the Core. Please come immediately. Over.” He went to move to the radio, when the sound of planks of wood being moved came from his workshop to the left of the house.
He picked up his radio and whispered. “This is Captain Felton. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Over.”
Placing his radio in his jacket pocket, he stepped back into the kitchen and picked up his flashlight. More planks of wood moved coupled with the sound of something sliding came from the right of the house. Opening the exterior door, he raised his flashlight and gun towards his workshop, except it wasn’t there anymore. A heap of splintered wood at sharp angles lay on the concrete floor. He sensed he wasn’t alone outside, and slowly swept the beam across the yard, across trees, his fence and finally towards the lake shore. Then he heard it. A shuffling, and swiping of something large. Pointing the flashlight upwards, he just caught the large shadow take off into the air. He took aim and fired into the darkness above him, but it was no good the creature had already become one with the night sky above him.
Just as he realized his heart was beating out of his chest, the alarm he set in the living room went off and he almost fired the gun off again. Fuck.
Quickly turning the alarm off, he grabbed his keys, left the house and jumped in his pickup.
As he turned on his pickup’s main beams, he thought he saw something scurrying behind the trees near the lake, but chose to ignore it. Soon he was on the road towards the Core. He clicked on his radio. “This is Captain Felton. What’s going on? Over.”
There was a short pause, before an anxious voice replied. “We have multiple breaches of the walls. Both ground and air based E.L.F’s are inside the camp at various locations. Evacuations have begun in most of the major towns. Over.”
Dark shapes became more visibly lit by the explosions and bullets strafing the night sky as Zach drove into the Core’s parking lot. On his way he had seen a number of E.L.F’s on the ground, some without wings, and various platoons of soldiers fighting them. He quickly ran from the pickup, into the Core’s lobby, past people also running and entered the elevator with a number of others. The conversation was of creatures, and the walls being breached.
Soon he was entering the noise of the central operations hall. He half expected to see the red hair of the General, but instead Amanda Holland waved him over. Standing next to her was Raj, and a number of other people he didn’t recognize. Most looked afraid.
“Captain, as you may have noticed the camp is experiencing an onslaught, and a number of E.L.F’s have made it over the walls. Our rail guns are only partially working due to the generator at the dam malfunctioning. Dr. Joshi thinks you might be of some use in stopping the creatures.”
Zach’s instinct was to tell her to go to hell, but his better judgement stopped him. “How can I help?” She looked at Raj.
“A lot of the units out there, don’t have much experience fighting E.L.F’s especially not in open terrain as in the camp. I suggested to Ms Holland that you should be put in charge of the defensive operations within the camp.”
“Show me the current situation.”
Holland briefly said something to someone nearby, and the large screens at the front of the hall changed, one showing a plan view and hundreds of red dots and another a similar top down perspective but this time showing the four walls of the camp. The dots were clearly in higher number around the detention centre.
Zach took a few steps towards the screens. “Raj, do you have any idea yet as to why they are drawn to the people affected?”
“There’s a link between them obviously, but the information carrier is not of any type of radiation that we know of. It must be form of subatomic particle we haven’t discovered yet.”
“Well whatever is causing it, we might be able to use it to our advantage.”
“What do you mean?” said Holland.
“I have a plan of how we’re going to save the camp
, but you’re not going to like it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Abbey stood on the north wall, the wind buffeting her face. The smell of burning oil and metal wafted through the air, as the closest gun turret had to stop from firing due to overheating. Amongst the automatic gunfire, she could hear them out there, a multitude of shadows moving in the darkness. Things that crawled, slithered and flew.
She spotted a dark form rise up from the tree line and fly straight towards a group of soldiers desperately trying to stop anything from breaching their part of the wall. In their panic their bullets mostly missed the creature, which bore down on them, talons stretched out in front. Abbey squinted thrusting her hand out in front of her towards the creature, concentrating her mind. Stop. Stop. The creature continued surging forward, grabbing one of the soldiers and taking itself and the soldier off the camp side of the wall. The soldier screamed in agony.
“No…” She closed her eyes and forced her will outwards. “Stop!” when she opened them, the large monkey-bird hybrid was hovering just past the wall, clenching the terrified soldier who was looking down at the drop to the ground below. Keeping her concentration focused, she moved her hand back across to the wall. The flying creature duly followed her direction, moving to just above the wall. The other soldiers had stopped firing, and were now watching in amazement.
“Leave.” Abbey almost whispered the command, but it was enough for the creature to drop the soldier, and fly off into the night. She took a deep breath. The soldier lay on the ground, clutching his shoulder as a medic ran up to him. The other soldiers looked at Abbey eyes wide, then as if coming out of a dream, switched their attention back to the things that were still attacking.
Her radio came to life and she could just about hear Zach’s voice through the melee around her. “How’s it looking? Over.”
“We’re just holding this part of the wall. How are the others doing? Over.”
“They’re learning on the job. I’ll be with you as soon as I can. Over.”
On a part of the eastern wall siblings Gerik and Martha Jankowski both held hands, and closed their eyes. The tingling surged up their necks into their heads making their minds stretch out into the fury of noise and motion a few hundred yards in front of them. They had already done this countless times at the detention center, and were now used to the weird sensations and the feeling of otherness when linking their minds to each other and E.L.F’s. Slowly the orgy of creatures staggering towards the wall came to a stop. The soldiers on the wall stopped firing into the dark and raised their barrels, then turned their attention to the elderly brother and sister who were both smiling.
For a moment the creatures all looked upwards as in awe and then turned and moved away.
On the southern wall, overlooking the river Cal fired off his snipers rifle nailing a flying lizard-like creature which had already dragged three soldiers to their deaths off the side of the wall. Fiona stood beside him, firing best she could with her M4 into the ice covered waters a few hundred feet below.
Cal knew why he and the others were released, but he couldn’t bring himself to use his abilities, doing so just gave the council a reason to keep him imprisoned for longer. If he could do his part without using his powers, maybe they would realize he was just like everyone else and would leave him and Fiona alone. So far he had racked up eight kills, and he hadn’t needed to use his mind creature connection thing once. He glanced at Fiona as the battle raged around him, even in the middle of this madness he was glad she was with him.
A loud noise of cracking and bending steel emanated from the east of the river, followed by the sound of rushing water. All lights from the wall swung down to the river, and a mini tsunami of water smashed up against the cliffs below the wall.
“One of the river barriers is down, be ready for anything!” shouted a soldier just a few yards from them.
The splashing and the cracking noise grew closer to the wall, and then they saw it. A large oily black tentacle as big as a house rose out of the water, and then splashed back down, the spray rising above the eighty foot high cliffs and hitting the lower part of the wall.
Bullets strafed the water where the beast had appeared but it was like firing into the air, no impact could be seen. One of the camps apache helicopters flew over the wall and dropped a search light down onto the rushing water, which just ebbed and flowed with no sign of anything else.
“I’m sure it’s the same creature we saw in the river near Atlanta!” shouted Fiona anxiously.
Cal readied his rifle, and looked down the night scope at the now calmer river. “I can’t see much of…”
With an alright roar, whatever the creature was rose up out of the river, its former tentacle just being the end of a larger part which rose higher and higher. Water splashed against the wall as they were all now looking up at this thing that was standing twenty story’s high and was still rising. The Apache flew backwards, but it was too late and one of the creatures tentacles whipped around smashing the tail rotor and sending the chopper spiraling into the dark waters. All gunfire focused on this creature that ignored all attempts to stop it.
“It’s too big Cal, it’s going to crash through the wall!” shouted Fiona, “Cal, you must do something!” her voice pleaded with him.
Momentarily Cal was dazed by the spectacle in front of him, but he dropped his gun and closed his eyes and let the world around him fall away, until all he could see again was bright specks of light inside a dark void. The creature threatening them was bright and clear to him, he could also see all of it, not just the part above the water. It had more tentacles below the surface and was sitting on the bottom of the river bed. He could also feel the other E.L.F’s around him, and he quickly swung his view around. Thousands of glowing particles both near and far moved and jostled. He turned back to the huge leviathan which was now leaning over the wall, and focused his mind towards it.
Fiona and those around her looked straight up as the creature lurched over them. “Anytime now Cal!”
Straining his mind to reach the thing in front of him, he raised his hands above his head. The creature’s skyscraper like tentacle stopped, as if frozen in mid-gesture high above the wall. Those on the wall stood mouth agape, as water slid off the creature and splashed down around them. He then lowered his arms backdown towards the river, and the creature did the same, retreating away from the wall and finally disappearing into the frothy river surface. The world around him returned, and Fiona hugged him.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Zach looked down over the wall, near the dam that had kept the camp supplied with electricity for months. The clouds had cleared above, and the noon sun beamed down from patches of blue. The wall holding the water back was smashed near the top, and water was gushing through various holes. Teams of men, some hanging off the end of ropes were looking closely at the damage.
“That’s not the worse of it,” said a man in his forties, wearing a hardhat mostly hiding short dark hair. “Follow me.”
Jared led Zach down damp concrete stairs, though narrow corridors and into the bowels of the dam. He opened a red metal door with warning signs on it, and they walked into a cavernous room housing the dams generators.
Walking down past the large brown-red turbines, they eventually walked up a small staircase and faced a row of eight foot high pale green metal boxes.
“I don’t think I need to tell you what the problem is…” A number of the panels, buttons, dials were smashed, revealing the wires inside which looked burned.
“An E.L.F got in here?” Zach looked around for any other signs of damage.
“No one in my team saw any. It’s not impossible but this is the only thing we can find damaged.”
Zach knew what the chief engineer was getting at, but didn’t want to say it out loud.
“Were there not guards here?”
“There were some at the start of the attack, but as things got worse elsewhere in the camp they well pulled away.�
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Zach looked at the walls around him. “Any cameras?”
Jared gave a short laugh. “No cameras.”
“How long we talking until the things here are back to normal?”
“We are running at about 20 percent of our output, what with the reduced water flow and some of the generators being completely out of commission due to this damage, I would say at least a month before we are back up to one hundred percent.”
“I want cameras installed down here, don’t make them too obvious, and I’ll have guards back here patrolling twenty-four seven from tonight onwards. If there’s anything you need to make the repair work go quicker let me know.”
“Just keep the creatures off our backs, and we’ll be fine.”
Zach smiled and went to walk away.
“Er, rumor has it that, it was your idea to use the Cascaders to help defend the walls?”
Zach turned. “Yeah.”
“To be honest, when we heard people were changing, becoming like those things outside, I supported them being put away, at least for a while. But after last night, I think maybe that was mistake.” Zach smiled again, and left.
As Zach drove back to the Core, his mind pondered at why someone would want to sabotage the dam. One of Tinley's men carrying out revenge for their boss? Or maybe the Hell Fire gang wanting to cause problems? Either way it meant there were people inside the walls who were actively trying to destroy the camp and harm those inside. At least Abbey’s back home.
As he stopped the pickup in the parking lot of the Core his radio came to life. “Captain Felton, on your return to the Core, can you go to Amanda Holland’s office. Over.”
Zach sighed. What part of the wall is she going to post me too now. He acknowledged the request and begrudgingly made his way to her office, after a short wait he was sitting opposite her.
She went to talk but he stopped her. “Before I get posted back to whatever part of the wall you want me at, I’ve just come back from the dam.”
