by Evan Currie
Already? They must have them on SONAR, Jasper thought with some surprise. He hadn’t heard that the fleet was tracking it somehow, but he supposed that if anyone would be one step ahead it would be one of the Virginia Class fast attack boats.
“Roger. We’re arming our assets. Will deploy on command, Dory.”
“Hold off,” The communication from the Dory said immediately, “We want to hit the target from every side at once, but it’s more important that we do not lose it. Stay with it, Three.”
“On it. As long as it stays at its current depth, the only way I’m losing it is if I run this bird dry.”
“We’ll arrange a hand off before that happens, Three,” The Dory’s communication officer responded dryly. “Stay tight.”
“Roger that.”
The communication channel closed, and Jasper just glanced over his shoulder, “New mission, we’re tracking now. Bird dog the target, lead the hunters in. Hit it with everything we’ve got. Hold tight, this ride could get interesting!”
*****
The Doris Miller Task Group twisted in the ocean, throwing spray into the air behind each tin can as the whoops of alarms could be heard from ship to ship.
Missile boxes were locked into place, Cruisers already pouring enough radar energy into the region to cook anything that happened to be flying in exactly the wrong place.
The Dory herself was drawing back even as flight operations continued apace, the Argonauts hammering down on the deck while the Tophatters took over their operations.
For the next few hours, a completely empty patch of the Pacific was the focus of more firepower than had ever been seen in the region since WW2.
*****
Chapter 18
Florida Swamp
Kirth was trying to get a measure of the woman who’d come out of nowhere, wearing similar kit to the unknown from earlier. She acted like an officer, which didn’t mean shit of course. He was a US Marine, he didn’t take orders from anyone not in his chain, and she sure as fuck wasn’t in his chain.
Still, at the moment he wasn’t opposed to suggestions that didn’t sound like they came from the fevered mind of the village idiot.
So, when she asked for a fall back to a defensible position, he weighed that and decided that it didn’t sound too stupid.
It wasn’t like they had orders, anyway, so fuck it.
He ordered his men to get ready to fall back.
“Sergeant,” The supposed Colonel called him over, eyes scanning the men with a skeptical look. “Your men seem… under equipped.”
Kirth grimaced, left hand absently patting the 1911 in his right.
“Our gear is at the bottom of the swamp, with the chopper we were in,” He admitted. “Resupply is en-route, along with reinforcements.”
“Ah,” She nodded, eyes falling on his sidearm. “I knew a man who carried a 1911 once. He made it count when necessary, however even he didn’t use one against the scourge by choice. Take this.”
She was handing out a pistol that looked a lot like the 1911 in generalities. Kirth accepted it with some hesitance, the cool fit and weight not quite right in his palm but close.
“Pulsed Plasma Sidearm,” She said casually, bringing her carbine up to her shoulder and putting a couple shots into the woods at a target only she could see. “Functionally identical to a slug thrower, but with a more effective kick. It’s sighted in to fifty meters, Sergeant.”
“Yes Ma’am,” Kirth said, slightly hesitantly.
She wasn’t a US Marine, but she certainly talked like she knew her way around the neighborhood.
“Corporal!” the Colonel snapped out, “Stop playing around and end those things, it’s time to go!”
“Yes, Colonel, sorry about that. Just getting carried away,” Ben said over his shoulder, the chunky rifle not leaving his shoulder as he rose to his feet and began to fall back, still firing.
“Now,” the Colonel turned to Kirth again, “I believe we need a fallback point. You said that reinforcements were inbound?”
“Yes… Ma’am?”
She smiled thinly. “I am aware that we’re in different services, Sergeant. Be easy, I’m not giving orders. Merely… suggestions. May I make a suggestion, Sergeant?”
Kirth licked at the inside of his mouth, the dryness suddenly taking up his consciousness as he mulled over that question. Slowly he nodded, “Yes… I would be open to a… suggestion.”
“Excellent, Sergeant,” The Colonel said with a cheerful grin. “Call me Jan, and here is what I propose, assuming I’ve made some accurate guesses about what the situation is. Please, correct me if I am in the wrong.”
*****
The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator orbited the thick scrub and tall forested sections of the swamp, dutifully sending back images of the fighting below as men and monsters flitted in and out of sight.
The drone quietly loitered over the region, directing its cameras to track the movement below, using FLIR as well as advanced optics to follow the commotion with precision.
Directed from a quarter of the country away, the drone dropped lower as it came back around in its orbit, focusing on the small group of men in a fighting retreat. The directions were noted, transmissions sent and received, and decisions were made.
*****
“Griss, cover the flank, we’re going to pull back to the lodge,” Kirth ordered, holding position himself to fire a pair of shots into a shadow that was moving in the wrong direction given the light.
A yelp of pain and sudden lack of motion confirmed his suspicion, so he fired another three rounds into the motionless target before slapping Griss on the shoulder and falling back to the next position.
Conducting a fighting retreat was tricky enough when you had sufficient weapons and ammo to properly handle yourselves. When one of your men was using a bow and arrow, the rest mostly had M9s at best, and some of your heavier artillery was a civilian with a lever action rifle, well it was an experience he wouldn’t soon be forgetting.
He glanced over to check the three people they had with them that he didn’t, couldn’t, quite trust. The Colonel and Ben were working together like he’d expect from any soldiers, let alone the type who’d dare call themselves Marines of any sort.
The redhead, she was holding her own surprisingly enough.
Her 30-06 was annoyingly the most powerful gun they had, aside from the space guns the other two carried, and she was clearly well used to handling it. Luckily, the caliber was easy enough to find, and they’d found boxes in the lodge on their first pass through.
The action between each shot was fast and smooth, and he could tell that she was reloading every chance she got the chance rather than waiting for the weapon to fire dry.
Someone taught that girl how to shoot in the real world, not just the range. Whoever it was, we owe him or her a beer.
Even so, he was well aware that the only thing that was keeping the whole situation was turning into a rout that was most emphatically not in their favor was the fact that the enemy didn’t have any significant ranged capability.
He was half sure that some of the infected monkeys had taken to throwing literal shit at them, but other than that they’d mostly been able to keep the enemy at bay enough for them to be out of range.
The problem was, there was a lot of them it seemed, and Kirth had a mental tally on the team’s ammo.
The words ‘flat fucking out’ sounded just about right.
“Lodge in sight, Sarge!” Driscoll called.
“Stay close, don’t lose anyone,” Kirth ordered sharply. “We’ve got a lot of open ground to cross, do this by the numbers!”
*****
The targets were escaping.
It was maddening. They kept slipping from its grasp as it moved in on their location. They would respond with a withering hail of fire that drove back the weaker of its members, forcing a retreat while it kept its core from the largest threat.
That was soon to come to an end, h
owever, as it had gotten the measure of the enemy now. Certain members were a threat, it was true, but not sufficiently to truly pose a danger.
It would eliminate those two first, the rest would then fall as chaff to the reaping.
There.
They were in the open.
It was time to end this little game.
*****
Jan Manow dropped to one knee as she swept the field with the carbine in her grip. The enemy was a Type Three Meth as best should tell.
Quantum infection, limited intelligence, likely riding right on the edge of total mental breakdown.
A lot of the Scourge were like that. Immortality wasn’t easy on most minds, they almost all cracked eventually. Few, if any, seemed to come back from the edge as best anyone could tell.
The abyss swallowed everything, eventually.
“Corporal,” She called. “Cover the tree line.”
“Yes, Ma’am!”
She glanced over to where the Sergeant was, noting that the local Marines had cleared the area and were taking up covering positions.
“Call it in, Sergeant.”
“You’re too close!”
“I said call it in!”
The local Sergeant hesitated a moment before he put a cell phone to his head, talking quickly into the handset in hushed tones.
“Hold the line Corporal!”
*****
Ben barely grunted his reply to the order, more focused on the target rich environment they were currently dealing with. Because the sound of the local Marines’ firearms had died out, he assumed they were out of ammo because that was about the only thing he could imagine would stop them from firing at this point.
The tree line crawled.
The change brought on by the infestation of the alien signature had twisted the local fauna and, he could see, some of the local humans as well. Completely inhuman now, barely recognizable for what they had been.
Poor bastards.
The pulse of the weapon against his shoulder was a comfort, even as the tree line swarmed and then vanished under the sudden influx of the infected. He thumbed the weapon over to short bursts, not pausing in his firing as he held ground against the approaching wave of infected.
Damn thing has to have been grabbing every animal it could, and there’s a lot of animals in the forests here.
Distantly, almost filtered out by Ben’s mind, the staccato report of a now familiar rifle penetrated his senses. He blinked, unbelieving, and glanced to one side as he realized the weapon he’d heard was an ancient lever action rifle.
“Are you out of your mind!?” He demanded, not pausing in his firing as Sandra worked the action of the rifle and fired again.
“You think it’ll be safer in the cabin? Really?”
He snorted.
Girl has a point, He supposed. The lodge behind them wouldn’t hold for a minute against a wave of infected this size.
“How much more ammo do you have for that antique?” He asked, surprised that she still had rounds given that the Marines had emptied their weapons sometime earlier.
“Few more and that’s it,” She answered. “I only had a box in the skiff, and that barely filled my pockets before we started this.”
She paused, looking around, “I’m a little surprised that the Marines ran for it though.”
“Hm? Oh them?” Ben said idly while shooting, “They didn’t.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Corporal!” The Colonel yelled. “Danger Close!”
Ben let his weapon drop as he twisted and lunged at a surprised Sandra, tackling her to the ground as the world exploded in their faces.
*****
USMC Super Cobra, Captain Francis ‘Firebrand’ Wilcox
“Pour it on, Gunrunners,” Wilcox ordered as he felt the shudder of the twenty-millimeter cannon roaring. They had strike info from the Marines on the ground, calling it in over a cell phone of all things, with the fire data being redirected to the Gunrunners through the switchboard at MCAS New River.
It wasn’t the strangest fire mission he’d ever received, but it was up there.
Can’t believe we’re being ordered to drop close air support on American Soil. I’m not even sure this is legal.
That was something he would worry about after the Marines on the ground were out of danger.
He flipped the safety off the Zuni rockets, triple checking the coordinates before he opened fire along with the rest of the Gunrunners.
The skies over the Glades lit up with fire and smoke as all hell rained down from above in the form of dozens of five-inch folding fin rockets. The Mk 32 ATAP warheads lit up the world.
*****
Chapter 19
San Francisco
“Jesus Christ, what a fucking mess.”
The city was in ruins, smoke obscuring much of it even as the wind off the bay worked to blow much of it away. The morning light had brought a pallor across the bay city, leaving it looking somehow more horrific than it had in the night.
Lieutenant Grady had seen worse in his career with the Navy, more so once he pinned his BUD, but not in the USA.
Never in the USA.
They’d inserted via the bay, negotiating the wreckage of the Golden Gate in the small craft with some difficulty. The iconic bridge hadn’t been wiped out so much as twisted and deformed, leaving it a hazard to anything larger than a small boat.
The city was still burning but looked more intact that a direct hit would seem to indicate based on what they knew. The rock that came down had to have struck elsewhere, but still close enough to do the job.
He’d led his team to the dock where the Jerimiah Obrien was tied up, the old WW2 Museum ship still in shockingly good shape considering what had come down on the region, and they’d gone ashore there.
Part of the mission had been to locate the Lake Champlain, but early on that became a moot point.
The bow of the Aegis Cruiser was visible in the bay, canted over and sticking up out of the water. The ship had been torn open and flooded, it had only taken a brief examination to tell that no survivors would be found.
Chief Mizowski stepped up beside him as Grady examined the city before him.
“This is some ugly shit, Ell Tee,” The Chief said conversationally, almost like they were talking about a bit of bad weather coming their way.
Grady knew that was just the Chief’s way of dealing, the way most of them had for dealing with this sort of horror. Treat it like you saw this kind of thing every day, like it had nothing on some of the shit you’d seen. Sometimes, you could even fool yourself into believing it.
For a while.
“Looks like the impact was on the other side of the bay bridge,” Grady said conversationally. “The blast front blew everything down from the that direction, even where the wave didn’t hit.”
“Looks like, Sir,” the Chief nodded. “Oakland, Alameda, Berkley… they don’t look so good from here either.”
“Someone else’s job,” Grady replied. “Let’s move toward South Beach, tell the others to keep their eyes out. I don’t know if we’ll see any survivors, but if we do, I want evac for them ASAP.”
“Yes sir.”
“If anyone sees anything,” Grady said. “And I mean anything out of the ordinary, you tell them to sing out. Higher says this might not have been the accident it looks like, remember that.”
“Yes sir.”
Grady sighed, letting his carbine rest against his plate carrier as he started walking forward into the still burning city.
He didn’t know what the hell they were in the city for, but it beat doing nothing.
*****
Situation Room, Washington
“Teams have begun to penetrate the cities around the strike zone at San Francisco, Mr. President.”
Strand looked up from the reports filtering in from the Pacific, confused for a moment before his expression cleared. “Very good. Are they finding anything?”
&n
bsp; “Nothing but destruction for the moment,” The Navy Admiral said with a sour expression. “We have SEAL team units ashore in Oakland, Alameda, San Francisco, Albany, Richmond… you get the idea. The devastation is… extreme.”
“What about the Guard and FEMA?”
“Already moving in, but it’s slower going for them as they have to find ways through the rubble. The Teams are smaller, more mobile. They’re not carrying tons of supplies,” The Admiral answered.
Strand nodded, “Let me know if they find anything.”
“Yes sir.”
He had too many brands in the fire, Strand knew it. There was nothing he could do about it, but he was all too aware that he was being stretched far too thin.
The situation in Florida was, arguably, the least important at the moment. Relatively few people were at risk and the forces on site seemed to be capable of dealing with it in a reasonable fashion.
However, it was also the situation that was providing him with the best intelligence on the overall situation… assuming that they could believe a word out of the mouths of the two subjects there.
Part of him wanted nothing more than to drag them in and put them in a hotseat for a while, until they had everything out of them. That, however, felt like it would be counterproductive given that the pair seemed intent on helping.
The situation in the Pacific was a nightmare in its own way, but at least the intelligence provided by the so-called Realms Marine Colonel might offer a solution there. It wasn’t a solution he liked, but no one promised him he’d get only solutions he’d liked when he took the job.
San Francisco.
That was something he was, to his shame, trying to do anything other than think about.
There just wasn’t anything he could do about it, and he knew it, but it felt like a personal failing that he wasn’t already on his way across the country to the city. Instead he was locked in a room, trying to make decisions that might have some semblance of an impact on the developing situation… even though every previous experience seemed to flatly contradict the possibility.
Aliens, from space or another dimension, does it really matter which? Strand felt like he was lost in some damn cheap movie of the week, only there were three different plots… a disaster film, an alien invader vs the navy movie, and a creature feature.
