Turned out, the moat was under the bridge, not on it.
The buzzing noise was deafening now as Dan slammed his door shut, crawling between the dash and his seat. He rolled onto his back, keeping as flat and low as he could. Until those EMPs were detonated, all he could do was hide and pray he wasn’t spotted. He tried to cancel out the terrible sounds and screams outside, calming his mind so he could think logically and tactically. But the only thought that kept dominating his mind was the fact that he was probably going to die on this bridge.
The plasma gunner belted out a loud war cry as fat gouts snapped through the air like huge metal whips, lashing the churning drone cloud. “EMP! Fire the EMP!” he screamed to the gunner in the opposite truck.
But the gunner manning the javelin wasn’t having any luck. The device was jammed. She kept pulling the trigger, but nothing was happening. With no time to nudge the harpoon free, all she could do was watch as the swarm spread over her like an oil slick. Her scream was drowned out by the swarm’s terrible buzzing before it even began. These things were everywhere now.
With the defensive formation of the militia broken, those that remained fought for their lives in scattered locations along the bridge, their weapons blasting the unrelenting swell in frenzied claps.
One of the militia fighters positioned further along the bridge had managed to slip past the swarm, crawling along the road to reach the lead Humvee. Hearing a frantic buzzing above him, he rolled onto his back and began firing at the sky, but his rounds had little effect as the swarm twisted up into the air like some demented flock of Starlings, then returned fire with its own projectiles. It was synchronized death as they cut through him, the center of the swarm glowing like a hot ulcer.
Cold sweat trickled down Dan’s cheeks as he pressed his back harder against the floor of the vehicle, the symphony of death cries now audible over the relentless mechanical buzzing. His heart thundered in his throat when he caught a glimpse of the black metal churning outside. He had no idea how many of his people were left out there, but he was guessing not many. Hopefully, Ally, Trey, and Jensen had already made it off the bridge and were somewhere far away by now.
Unbeknown to him, one of the drones had broken away from the center mass to conduct some reconnaissance. It gently fluttered down to the lead Humvee like a falling leaf, scanning the vehicle for any sign of a target.
When Dan caught its glint in the top corner of the rear, right-hand window, he cupped his hand over his mouth. Heart now firmly caught in his throat, his mind scrambled for ideas on how to escape, but he had no dice. And with no EMP grenades on him, the sidearm he was gripping with his other clammy hand would have zero effect on the swarm – a swarm that by now, must have numbered in the millions.
The single drone continued to hover outside the Humvee, meticulously peering into each window while it scanned for targets. The second the object spotted Dan pressed against the floor looking up at it, the rest of the swarm shifted direction and converged on the lead vehicle like a deadly typhoon.
As the swarm began to circle, Dan closed his eyes and placed the muzzle of his sidearm underneath his chin, but before he could pull the trigger, there was a series of loud, phosphor-white flashes, followed by a hailstorm of tiny objects peppering the roof of the vehicle. Dan immediately knew someone had just tossed a bunch of EMP grenades. It was now raining drones outside.
Jensen and Trey kept firing into the heart of the damaged swarm, which had thinned considerably but was still moving erratically like an agitated hornet’s nest. A blinding fountain of sparks showered the road until three separate strands dispersed from the center of the crippled swarm.
“Jesus,” Trey uttered to himself as each strand twisted majestically into the sky like a roaring Hydra. “What the fuck is it doing?”
“It’s thinking how much it doesn’t like being EMP’d,” Jensen yelled back, his voice barely audible over the relentless chug of his rifle.
Ally made it to the Humvee and ripped open the passenger-side door to see Dan curled underneath the dash looking up at her, relief flooding into his terrified eyes. She smiled, but there was no time for hugs and high-fives yet. “Quick!” she yelled. “We need to bounce!” Dan held up his hand and she hoisted him into the driver’s seat. “Get her started!”
“Roger that.” Dan kicked over the engine with a spluttering cough. “What about the javelin?”
“I’ll worry about that; you just be ready to mash that pedal in case we fuck this up.”
Further along the bridge, Matt could see the damaged formation of drone’s attempting to reconfigure itself, swirling less erratically, becoming more synchronized and balletic. If the swarm got a chance to recalibrate, it would launch another devastating attack. They had to strike first. Keeping low, he positioned himself directly underneath the swarm to survey the gruesome aftermath. This section of the bridge was covered with thousands of fallen drones, giving it the appearance of an ancient cobblestoned street littered with mangled corpses.
He could also see the EMP javelin was sitting idle and had not been fired yet, so he broke into a hard sprint towards the truck, dead drones crunching underneath his combat boots. “Someone better jump on that other cannon! I need cover!” he screamed.
Ally heard his plea. She spun around to see the coil of drones beginning to thicken like some type of braided alloy. They had less than a minute to act. She took off after Matt, leaping into the rear bed of the truck that housed the plasma cannon, grimacing at the sight of the dead gunner. The poor girl’s flesh and armor were lacerated beyond recognition. As Ally took hold of the twin handles and tilted the huge barrel skyward, she was careful not to slip on the clumps of wadded blood that now filled the truck bed.
When hearing Dan rev the Humvee’s engine, she saw Matt aiming the javelin directly at the swarm above. “Don’t fire it anywhere near the lead vehicle. These engines are EMP resistant, but if that harpoon detonates any lower than three-hundred feet, it could still fry everything, including our comms.”
Matt took aim and pulled the trigger, but only heard a hollow clicking sound "You won’t need to worry about that, the damn thing is jammed. I’m not firing anything.”
Ally grunted with frustration and hopped out of the truck; the soles of her boots were still slick with blood. She jumped up into the back of the other truck and nudged her father out of the way. “Move!” She swung the barrel back to Matt and began kicking at the heavy steel plate that housed the harpoon’s gas-powered bore.
Matt took hold of the weapon again, keeping his eyes on the swarm above, readying itself to attack at any moment. It was starting to angle downward as if suddenly becoming aware of their presence again. “Ally, you need to be quick. They’re waking up.”
Seconds felt like hours as she continued kicking. “Come on, you sonuva…”
“Ally, we need to bail!” Dan hollered from the lead vehicle. “Like, right fucking now!”
“He’s right... Ally!”
“I’m trying to… fuck!” she hissed, stomping harder. “Come on!”
“Ally!”
“I’m… trying… to…” Finally, she felt something shift behind the thick plate. The spring cartridge was aligned with the pin again. “Got it. Fire!” she screamed.
Suddenly, the swarm rose into the air like an animal poised to sink its teeth into the exposed jugular of some wounded prey.
That’s when Matt squeezed the trigger and the harpoon shot away as a white-hot bolt of lightning. The truck bucked like a wild stallion from the recoil, nearly tossing Matt and Ally out of it.
The harpoon tip detonated slightly above the swarm with an earsplitting burst of white light.
Matt grabbed Ally and threw his arms around her, shielding her from the thundering downpour of metal rain. His armor began to smoke like he’d been peppered with burning-hot coals. The drones were now falling pebbles of scorched metal as they pinged the truck, fritzing and sizzling as they bounced onto the asphalt. The echo of the e
xplosion rolled across the Potomac like a fading storm.
And then, silence once again. At last, it was over.
Ally was unable to hide the jubilation in her eyes. “You did it,” she said.
Matt smiled and shook his head. “No, we did it.”
There was a short beat of uneasy silence between them until Ally broke from his embrace and hopped off the truck. “We need to keep moving.”
“You’re not going to bury your dead?”
“There’s no time.”
“Ally, they’re soldiers,” Matt protested. “We can’t leave them out here like this.”
Ally’s flinty eyes snapped to him, annoyed he was questioning her decision, despite knowing it was a damn shitty one. “We need to make it back to Wainwright before nightfall - and there are far worse things than drone moats between here and Rappahannock River.” Deep down, Ally wanted nothing more than to burst into a flood of tears and mourn her dead, but she couldn’t. She kept her composure in check. As always, there would be a time and place to grieve.
Matt clenched his jaw. He knew she was right.
“Round up any supplies you can. Water, rations, and ammo. Dan, get your ass out here.”
Matt watched her start picking through the supplies of dead militia. She was now emotionless and robotic. Business as usual while she kept the pain suppressed. He knew the look all too well because he was a master at suppressing pain himself. Maybe this was an ability or trait he had somehow genetically passed down to her. Regardless, there was no denying that for a single precious moment before she broke free of his arms, her brittle veneer had softened. Matt knew, that despite her anger towards him if any bond were ever to be reformed, it would be through the act of hunting down Cromwell and ending him. In some weird way, that gave him hope that perhaps she wasn’t entirely lost to him. Only time would tell. He ran his jacketed forearm across his sweaty brow, then hopped down from the truck onto a sea of dead drones and bodies, rummaging through gear and supply pouches.
“Hey.”
Matt turned to see Dan crouching nearby, fishing out three ammo cartridges from a dead fighter. “You did good back there, old man.”
Matt went back to sifting through supplies. “Just doing my best to hold those lines.”
Twelve
The afternoon sky was an eerie latticework of silent lightning, constantly flickering with no thunder. Dan threaded the Humvee through the deserted streets of Fredericksburg.
The once quaint and charming Virginian town was now gutted. Many of the historic red-bricked buildings lay partially collapsed from neglect and disrepair, with the surrounding asphalt cracked and ruptured. But the tufts of wild grass and creeping ivy were much thicker and greener here than in D.C. It appeared, even the Scourge couldn’t halt nature’s relentless onslaught to reclaim its authority over this land.
There was even wildlife.
Matt’s eyes brightened upon spotting a white-tailed buck. It stared at the approaching convoy; its majestic Antlers briefly haloed by a flicker of distant lightning. Startled by the sudden intrusion of man, it took flight, crossing the street and disappearing behind an old storefront, the frantic clack of its hooves bouncing off the brick walls.
“Must be hard not being able to hunt for food in this world,” Matt said.
“Not when some of it is Afflicted,” Trey snickered with an almost resentful gripe.
“How do you know the virus has spread to animals?”
“Because if you get near one that’s infected, it’ll attack you. Doesn’t matter if it’s herbivore either,” he explained. “The Scourge sends them mad. It’s like a strain of rabies.”
“So it’s keeping wildlife populations in check?”
Trey shrugged. “That’s a question for Wainwright. All I know is, if it has a heartbeat or casts a shadow, we don’t eat it. Only way to be certain.”
“I’ve read about food shortages from your time. Any of it true?” Dan asked, mounting a curb to veer around a brick facade that had collapsed from the town’s old courthouse and was strewn across the street.
“We certainly had our fair share of problems. Then the Wraith showed up. Like you, we figured out ways to synthesize our food. But in the end, it wasn’t a food shortage that was the problem, it was the dwindling population. With over five billion dead from the invasion, and nearly half a billion sent to fight the war on Epsilon, we were running out of people to feed.”
“What’s our ETA?” asked Jensen, fidgeting with an adjustable clip on his helmet strap.
Suppressing the heightened sense of dread the old town was now giving him, Matt glanced down at the tablet device he was holding and swiped the screen. A holographic image bloomed to life displaying GPS coordinates and terrain scans, along with a host of latitude and longitude data related to their current location. “Forty-four minutes. Give or take.”
Jensen kept his eyes on the data while he took a moment to study it. “You really think we’re going to find anything out here?”
Matt breathed in deeply through his nose before responding. “I don’t know.”
“Well, we better,” Ally said, her eyes fixed on the world outside. “Otherwise twelve of my best men and women just died for nothing.”
Matt and Ally entered the woods near the remains of Westmoreland Berry Farm, their breath rapidly chugging from behind their gas masks.
Dan, Trey, and Jensen were ordered to stay with the Humvee. They had secured a small perimeter on the dirt road that ran adjacent to the Rappahannock River.
Despite the new overgrowth, Matt recognized much of this area as it once was. He had trudged through here decades ago when infiltrating Prescott’s mansion alongside Rowles and Rhea, and for the most part, the wooded landscape had not changed. Anyone passing through would not suspect a thing unusual in this part of the world. All seemed normal. The breeze carried a slight tang of pine and citrus, which was far from disagreeable. Conifer trees gently rustled, and the faint sunlight dappling off the slow-moving river below was enticing.
But the serenity was a ruse - as was the wild and lush greenery. Standing here long enough, one would soon be overwhelmed by the numbing silence. This region of Virginia seemed entirely devoid of life; no small animals skipping through the underbrush, no grazing livestock, and no birds chirping in the trees above. Nothing except that same dead silence Matt had grown accustomed to in D.C. It was if the local fauna had purposely avoided this area, knowing it once harbored something dark and otherworldly.
Before Matt and Ally crested the slope overlooking the estate grounds, they dropped to their bellies and slithered the rest of the way up. Propped on his elbows, Matt calmly sighted the estate below through his rifle scope. Perched next to him, Ally did the same with her crossbow, adjusting the magnification settings via a small holographic interface on the side of her optic mount.
As expected, the once grand and immaculately maintained grounds were in now total decay. While parts of the mansion and its foundations remained intact, the Versailles-like gardens were an unruly mottle of weeds. Many of the iconic statues that occupied the estate were toppled over, buried under layers of thorny bramble. Those that remained upright, sat lopsided in tangles of shrubbery. An impressive statue of Apollo, the ancient god-like metaphor for a ruling King, was nothing more than a mound of shattered marble at the foot of a bone-dry water Parterre.
“There’s something I need to warn you about,” Matt said to his daughter, still sighting down his scope at the estate below.
Ally broke her line of sight and turned to him. “Now you decide to tell me?”
“Last time I was here, I came across the device Cromwell was using to go through time. That same device is what sent me here.”
“Assuming Cromwell’s not still down there, you don’t think he would have taken it with him?”
“I’m not sure he could have. Maybe parts of it. I don’t know. I have no idea how it worked, but there seemed to be multiple components to the machine. It looked lik
e an altar that was somehow made from the building structure itself. The other parts looked like cremation urns that had been fixed to the top of it.”
“If I’d have known this earlier, I would have brought some explosives.”
“Well, if it’s still down there, we need to find a way to destroy it. We need to keep Cromwell stranded in this timeline.”
“I thought we came here to look for the whereabouts of Rossiter’s data?”
“We did. But Cromwell is extremely fond of setting traps. If you see that altar, or anything that looks like one, don’t go anywhere near it.” Matt rose to his feet and began to make his way down the slope to the estate grounds.
Ally watched as Matt secured his weapon and began slithering through the underbrush on his stomach, making his way towards the outer grounds of the estate. She tapped the small comms earbud that was nestled inside her left ear. “Dan, you copy?”
“Go ahead.”
“We’re heading in.”
“What about the vehicle?”
“Secure it and make your way to my position. Bring Trey and Jensen.”
Weapons now raised; Matt and Ally reached the bottom of the embankment and began to push through a stretch of waist-high grass towards the mansion ruins. Having caught up with them, Dan, Trey, and Jensen advanced closely behind, keeping a tight wedge formation as they moved.
In the ethereal afternoon light, much of the lavish architecture appeared to have been eroded by some giant aluminum scouring brush. What remained of the white terracotta tiles and ornate brickwork was scorched black. Matt figured some of this was the result of the gas explosion he had set off in the kitchen years ago. At the time, he certainly heard and felt the explosion, but until now, he had not seen the extent of the damage it had caused.
The Revered (The Earth Epsilon Wars, Book 3) Page 8
