Downfall: The Deadlander Series (Book 1)

by Colin Sims

  “Oh, really?” Navid shouted. “Just keep your head down!”

  I didn’t take his advice. Whatever those lightning blasts were, if one hit us, we’d be fried—head down or not.

  Up ahead, I saw the dome of the Capitol House. It was still over a half-mile away. I squinted to see a strange sort of movement beside it, but the nearby buildings blocked the view.

  “You see that?” I asked Navid.

  He was still cursing under his breath as he checked the rearview mirror. “What?”

  “That’s New America’s Chinook, see it? It’s taking off from the Capitol House.”

  He grimaced. “I guess they got permission to land,” he said ironically.

  The chopper was rising higher and higher, ascending fast. I leaned forward to keep it in view, but just as I did, I jumped back.

  “They’re firing!”

  Two of the Chinook’s mini-guns were spitting what looked like a torrent of fire at one of the nearby hydro-towers.

  “What the hell are they shooting at?” Navid shouted.

  I couldn’t see. But the hydro-tower was reduced to rubble amidst an onslaught of explosive smart rounds.

  I felt a flash of anger, convinced that New America was behind whatever was happening. In fact, it was probably all New America. There weren’t any Mantidae at all, just New America the whole time.

  I was wrong.

  Navid and I both jumped when a sizzling purple light spiked up from the ground and blew the helicopter into a brilliant fireball. With a gasp, I shielded my eyes before re-opening them to see hundreds of smoking shards drifting to the ground.

  “Holy shit …” I breathed. All I could think was that whoever was in that helicopter had just been vaporized. It didn’t even seem real.

  “To hell with this,” Navid announced, and yanked on the wheel. The jeep screeched down an alley to the right. “The rendezvous is just ahead,” he added. “But if they’re not there, we keep going.”

  “What rendezvous?” I asked.

  Navid looked over at me, clearly trying to keep his nerves in check. I could tell he wanted to appear in control, but was fighting an uphill battle. No one was trained for something like this, not even a Presidential Guard. He wasn’t even that much older than me. Maybe twenty-four, at most.

  “Look,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but my job is to get you to the Capitol House. There’s a Special Missions team assigned to your retrieval, but if they’re … dead—then I’m getting you there myself.”

  “Is it my brother?” I asked. “Is he—?”

  There was a blinding flash, and the next thing I knew, I was upside down, hanging from my seatbelt as the jeep twisted through the air. I felt like I was going to burst, my insides churning inside my stomach, pushing all the blood to my face. And then, in an instant, I felt shattered like a ball of glass as the jeep landed on its roof, scrunching the roll bars above my head. All I saw were a series of still pictures: One in the air. One on the ground. One of Navid, hanging charred and limp in his seat.

  I’d never been in combat before, not even a real fistfight. But I knew. I knew right away. Navid was dead.

  It was either minutes or seconds after we crashed before my arms started working again. They felt sluggish as I scrambled to undo the seatbelt. The shoulder strap was the only thing keeping me from falling on my head, but it was also trapping me inside the car. I could smell the leaking bio-fuel as it pooled beneath me.

  “Navid,” I croaked, hoping that somehow I was wrong and he was still alive. There was no reply. The only sound was the creaking carcass of the jeep, mixed with the not-so-distant crackle of gunfire.

  I struggled harder with the seatbelt and managed to wrest myself free. I fell onto my shoulder and twisted around to get the mangled door open. It was jammed against the concrete. I couldn’t push it open with my hands. I needed more force. I scrunched into a ball, turned myself around and kicked at the doorframe with my legs. It budged about an inch with each kick. By the twentieth, there was enough space to crawl out.

  After I was back on my feet, I rushed to the driver’s side door. I knew Navid was gone, but I couldn’t leave him. I tried to yank it open, but it was too hot. I couldn’t even touch the handle. The entire door appeared to be welded shut, fused with the surrounding metal. I took a step back, looking for something I could try. The damage to the jeep looked strange; a purplish tint scarred the metal.

  I rushed back to the passenger side, holding my nose against the increasingly pungent smell of ethanol. I crouched down, thinking there had to be a way to drag Navid out. I tugged at the door to get it a little wider. It was odd that only Navid’s side was hot, not mine. We should have both been dead.

  I managed to open the door a few more inches when I heard a voice yell from behind me. “Kid! Get the hell away from there!”

  I turned and saw a BDF soldier running toward me down the alley. She was coming from Capitol Boulevard.

  “My friend’s trapped!” I shouted back, refocusing on the door as she ran up and knelt beside me.

  “Let me have a look,” she said, pushing me aside. She peered inside the cab for half a second, then looked back at me, her eyes resolute. “He’s gone. We’re outta here.”

  I wanted to object as she grabbed my arm and pulled me up. I wanted to tell her to get lost. It killed me to just leave. But she was right. He was dead. And at any second, the jeep was going to explode.

  Now on my feet, I became instantly aware of how close we were to the fighting. I could hear shots and explosions no more than a hundred yards away.

  “Come on,” she shouted, leading me back to the Boulevard. I followed her down the alley.

  She moved fast, but cautiously, keeping her rifle close to her cheek with the holoscope activated. A few seconds later, she was peering around the corner, checking the street.

  “It’s clear,” she announced. “I’m taking you to the civilian shelter, got it? It’s just on the other side of that building there.” She motioned toward the housing structure across the street.

  Standing behind her, I read the nametag on her upper back: O’Brian.

  “Listen,” I told her. “The guy in the jeep was my bodyguard. He was trying to get me to the Capitol House.”

  “There’s no way.” She shook her head. “That place is crawling with them. You’ll be safer here.”

  I felt a jolt of electricity down my spine. “What do you mean ’crawling with them?” I asked. “Is my mom … is the President okay?!”

  O’Brian looked at me for a second, as if figuring something out. “My God, you’re Tripp’s brother, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I don’t know the full situation at the Capitol. I just know there’s bugs there. And we can’t stay here. We have to move, understand?”

  I suddenly couldn’t stop the knot in my stomach from growing bigger. The only word I really heard from her was “bugs.” It played over and over in my head.

  Bugs …

  It was the first time anyone had directly said that actual Mantidae were in the city. I’d seen their attacks, but I hadn’t seen them. O’Brian shouted to get my attention, telling me to hurry.

  I followed her into the wide street, both of us keeping low as we ran. I looked north, toward the Capitol House, but the billowing smoke from the downed Chinook obscured the view. I could only catch a glimpse of the grayish-white dome through the haze.

  On the other side of the street, a half-dozen soldiers were crouched tightly against the wall of a damaged hydro-tower. It was one of the early ones: only three stories tall, converted from an Old World building that housed a parking garage. The lieutenant waved us in as we ran to their location.

  Breathing hard, O’Brian reported, “Sir, only one of them made it. He’s Tripp’s brother.”

  The lieutenant looked unimpressed. “How the hell did you make it, kid?” he asked me. His nametag read “Jones,” and
I’d seen him somewhere before, probably with Alec. He added with a smirk, “Christ, I just sent O’Brian out there to give her some exercise.”

  “So kind of you,” she grunted, pulling me with her as she mashed us both against the wall with the rest of the squad. “LT, we have to get him to the shelter.”

  Jones shook his head. “No time for that. Besides,” he looked at me, “what are you, kid—fourteen, fifteen?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Tripp’s brother, huh?” he asked O’Brian, squinting. Before she could answer, he continued, “Then you know how to fire a weapon, I’m guessing,” and he handed me his sidearm.

  Holy shit …

  Out of instinct, or rather countless hours of Boot, I flipped on the holoscope as soon as the grip was in my hand.

  “There, see?” said Jones. “He’s a natural. Now listen up, kids. L-Squad is covering the manholes over at 4th and Grove. So we’re gonna stick ourselves to that cluster back there on Myrtle, got it?”

  One of the soldiers was visibly shaking. “What about reinforcements?” he asked.

  Jones glanced at him. “Hell, Mendez, we are the reinforcements. Now, let’s move.”

  One by one, the soldiers sprang from the wall and headed a block south to the corner of Capitol and Myrtle.

  I stayed with O’Brian, crouching behind her when she stopped to take cover behind a rusted car a few yards from the intersection.

  “Why manholes?” I asked her. “What’s going on?”

  “They’re coming from below,” she answered, training her holoscope on the nearest hole in the ground. I absently noticed that the lid was gone.

  Several tense seconds passed as we waited, seeing nothing. There were still plenty of guns rattling in the distance, but the sounds of the nearby gunfire had stopped. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I asked O’Brian if she’d actually seen one of the “bugs” yet.

  There was a brief pause before she nodded. “Yes.”

  “You mean, you actually—?”

  But the explosion that was Jones’ voice cut me off. “INCOMING!” he boomed, shooting a jolt of panic through my bones.

  I’d spent enough hours in Boot to know that “incoming” meant, “look up.”

  At first, I was more curious than terrified. It looked twice as big as a person and it was at least a hundred yards overhead as it arced through the air like a football. I could tell that it wasn’t going to land on us, but probably a little farther off. It was a sickly reddish black and … squiggly. That was all I could really think of to describe it.

  O’Brian and I were both staring, following the thing’s trajectory until it disappeared behind some buildings a few blocks away. I half-expected to hear an explosion when it landed, but what I heard instead was much worse. A piercing, inhuman screech filled the air, followed by the panicked screams of soldiers and spurts of gunfire.

  “Is that one of them?” I shouted to O’Brian, raising my pistol in the direction of the fighting.

  “I’ve never seen them come from above like that,” she gasped, her eyes wide, then added under her breath, “we’re all dead.”

  Hearing that, I got scared. I’d been panicked, shocked, and confused, but hearing O’Brian say that made me truly realize for the first time that at any moment, I could die. Like truly die, for real.

  That’s when Jones boomed “INCOMING!” for a second time. And this time, looking up, I saw the thing was going to land right on us.

  ***

  “Lock onto it!” Jones ordered, raising his AR-15 to the incoming Mantidae.

  O’Brian did the same, raising her rifle and double-tapping the thermal image on her holoscope. The alien turned bright green, signifying it was locked for Seekers.

  For my part, I’d forgotten I even had a gun.

  The “bug” was only a second from landing when the first soldier opened fire. The rest of them followed suit, firing in rapid, three-round bursts.

  What happened next was a blur. When the “Mantidae” landed, it didn’t look anything like what I’d seen before. It moved so fast, I couldn’t tell what it looked like—just a lightning storm of freakish tentacles whipping from one soldier to the next. I barely had time to blink before three of them were dead, cut to pieces. I’d never seen blood like that before …

  Then O’Brian was yanked away with a sickening squelch as her attempt to scream was cut short.

  At that, I didn’t think. I ran. I ran faster than ever before in my life.

  I was the only one who hadn’t fired. Maybe that counted for something since whatever that thing was hadn’t lashed out at me yet. A couple soldiers were still firing, and I heard Jones’ voice before it abruptly stopped.

  There was an entrance to the smoldering hydro-tower only twenty feet away. It looked so close; I knew I could get there. As long as I didn’t look back, I’d be safe—at least that’s what I was screaming inside my head.

  Ten more feet, a few more steps. I kept running, clenching the pistol in my fist. I reached the metal doors and yanked them open, diving inside. The concrete was cold, but the air was thick and smoky. Fires were burning somewhere in the building. I scrambled to get up, lifting my collar to cover my face. I could barely see a thing through all the smoke. But so far, whatever that monster was outside, it hadn’t followed me. I headed deeper into the building, looking for someplace to hide. There was a large metal desk inside one of the grow areas. It would have to do.

  I ducked behind it and tried to catch my breath as quietly as possible, not moving a muscle. I was listening hard, trying to snag even the slightest sound from the darkness. But the building was quiet.

  Outside, the battle was raging. I sat for minute after minute as the walls shook from nearby explosions, listening to the endless crackling of gunfire. All I could do was stay put, my heart pounding pure adrenaline. Looking down, I saw the pistol shaking violently in my grip. I grasped it with my other hand to steady it.

  “I have to get out of here,” I finally whispered, peeking over the desk toward the doorway. I couldn’t see anything except smoke hanging in the air like a layer of black fog.

  Cautiously, I crawled from behind the desk, keeping my weapon trained on the door. There was still nothing—nothing I could see. That’s when I thought to flip on the holoscope. Anything alive would show up as red. I slowly got to my feet but stayed crouched as I crept forward.

  I peeked around the doorway. The hallway was dark and empty. I stepped out and started making my way down the narrow hall. I was looking for a back exit.

  I kept going, taking short, cautious steps. The hallway seemed endless. My heart leapt with each explosion that shook the walls. Finally, I reached an intersection. I pointed the holoscope in both directions. All blue.

  I went right, scanning the wall for doors. I kept inching forward for what felt like an eternity. My heart was racing, and it was all I could do to stop my hands from shaking uncontrollably as I aimed the pistol in front of me.

  I found a door. There was a sliver of bright light along the bottom edge. It looked like daylight. It had to be. For a split second I wanted to crash straight through and escape, but I caught myself.

  There could be more out there, I thought, pointing my pistol in every direction to make sure I was still alone—which was a big part of the problem. I needed to find help. Surely there was some kind of central command somewhere—somewhere where the BDF was coordinating its defenses. That’s where I had to go. That’s where Mom and Dad would be, and maybe Alec, too. That’s where I’d be safe. On my own, I was as good as dead.

  I lightly put my ear against the door and listened. There weren’t any sounds that I could hear. Not even gunfire. I took in a deep breath and slowly, quietly started pushing the door open an inch at a time. By the time I got to four or five, I took a peek outside.

  What I saw turned me to stone. There were at least three of them, moving slowly along the other side of the street, scanning in every direction. I didn’t da
re to move or even close the door.

  I stared in pure, heart-thumping panic. These were not the same things I saw every day during target practice. They were still insects, but more spider-like than the other Mantidae. From what I could tell, they didn’t have wings or arms, or even legs. Instead, they moved along on an ever-shifting mass of long, spindly tentacles that sprouted from every inch of their bodies. Each black-red limb, of which there were dozens per monster, was at least ten to fifteen feet long and covered in small metallic scales.

  And then there was the electricity. Sparks of it were constantly zapping between the tentacles. I wondered if these were the same creatures that shot down the helicopter a few minutes ago.

  I kept staring, not noticing that I’d pushed the door an inch or two wider. The creatures somehow reminded me of robots; the way they moved so exactly and methodically. I knew it was only a matter of time until they spotted me.

  I heard it before I saw it. A light clicking as the creature’s tentacles clung with claws to the side of the building above my head. The thing had probably been stealthily crawling toward me the whole time.

  Slowly, I dared to look up and saw the black mass of its head staring back at me with a dozen blood-red eyes. Tentacles were jutting outward and curved like the tail of a scorpion.

  I was dead. There was no running or luck that could save me this time. Those poisonous red globes would be the last thing I ever saw. I exhaled in a gasp, finally letting the breath I’d been holding for so long escape my lungs.

  But I wished I had breathed in, instead.

  The next thing I knew I was deaf, except for the merciless ringing in my ears. I was on the ground, covered in dust and debris. I couldn’t stop choking and coughing. The whole world was spinning, and for a second, I had to think real hard to even remember who I was.

  I blinked into the bright sun as soot and smoke swirled overhead. Suddenly, a figure appeared above me, standing tall. It was familiar. Human.

  It was Alec, reloading the grenade launcher on his M4.

  Chapter 5

  “Can you stand?” Alec asked, now crouching beside me. He was still aiming his rifle downrange as he checked me with his free hand.