by SD Tanner
She nodded approvingly. “Now you’re getting it.”
Stopping in the middle of the hangar, he bent his legs into a slight crouch and then straightened them sharply. The hydraulics kicked in and he sprung high into the air. When he landed, he lost his balance and tumbled to the floor.
Laughing, she held out her hands and boosted him to his feet. “You clearly don’t believe in learning to walk before you jump.”
Continuing to let her lead him while he walked, he said, “I don’t want to waste time. Leon and his squad worked it out and I will too.”
“Other than the obvious what’s your rush?”
While he’d sat listening to Stax in his shelter, he’d realized his life was over. Jenny was as good as dead, and Miranda had tried to kill him before the gas station had blown up. Losing Jas had cut him harder than he’d expected. She’d been a good kid, loyal and smart. Her faith in him had led her to Miranda and it was his fault she was dead. Guilt over her death was biting at him and he had to take more responsibility for the ones he loved. He couldn’t leave Jenny the way she was, and needed to go back to his old home in Albuquerque to make sure she was dead. Once he’d done that, he planned to spend every moment he had left killing the critters that had taken everything from him. Eventually he would die, but he was ready to go. In truth, he’d died right alongside Jas and Miranda, maybe not physically, but his life was over.
“I’m done.”
She stopped walking backwards in front of him. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t wanna do this. I don’t wanna adapt to this new world. It isn’t what I signed up for.”
“None of us signed up for this, but we are where we are, Jonesy.”
“Don’t call me that. Harry Jones was a guy who had a good job, a loving wife and a daughter with a grandchild on the way. Jenny and I were going to enjoy a quiet retirement together. You know, just doing normal stuff. I know we weren’t happy when Miranda got married in Vegas without telling us, but we’d have gotten over it.” Inside the Navigator gear, his shoulders slumped. “I was ready for that life, not for this one. This is gonna be tough, and even if we can get rid of the critters, nothing will ever be the same again.”
She nodded sympathetically. “I get where you’re at, so why do you want to be a fully functioning tank nav?”
He felt his face harden into an angry grimace. “Because I hate them. They took away everything that mattered to me. They’ve killed my whole family and I hate them for it. I don’t wanna be here anymore, but killing myself would be a waste. I plan to do as much damage to them as I can before they get me.”
“Death by critter.” When he didn’t reply, she added, “Nothing is known anymore, so we’ve all gotta choose our own path now. If you wanna die then that’s your choice. If you want to die killing these little fuckers, then we’ll teach you how to stay alive for as long as you can.” Batting his armor, she said, “Come on then. Let’s make you the best damned tank nav there is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Family first (Leon)
Standing at the end of the long row of bunks in their barracks, he sighed irritably at the mess. Beds were unmade, weapons were lying on the floor, and boxes of ammo and food had been tossed into corners. The place stank of sweat and people were talking loudly to one another, while several stereos blasted different songs. It was chaos in every way possible and it was only adding to his growing frustration.
Their trip to the nest and Albuquerque had been stressful and his body ached from using the Navigator gear. Even with the hydraulics, they were still lugging around over two hundred pounds of kit, making it cumbersome to move. He now understood why Tank walked through windows and smacked into ceilings. It wasn’t easy to move carefully when you suddenly became six inches taller, over a foot wider and had compromised peripheral vision.
Allowing his bad mood to rule, he roared, “Quiet!”
When nobody listened, he pulled his handgun from his holster, and fired it repeatedly through an open window on his left. His action brought everyone in the room to a complete standstill, and they stared at him in shock. Now he had their attention, he lowered his weapon and began to march down the middle of the room between the bunk beds on either side.
“Since the critters took over our planet this is now a military operation.” Spreading his arms wide, he added fiercely, “This is not a dormitory. You are not in school. This is a fucking barracks and it will function like one.”
Lexie was wearing her short-range visor that only allowed her to see her immediate surroundings. Hanging over the edge of one of the top bunks, she was chewing on a protein bar and watching him shout. “That’s not very helpful, Leon. None of us know what the difference is between a barracks and a dormitory.”
Tank said bluntly, “He’s right. This place is a shithole. Barracks are clean, tidy and everything has a place.”
“So what?” She asked archly.
Glaring at Lexie, he replied sharply, “It’s about discipline. Something you seem to lack.”
She snorted. “Don’t get up at me just because you’re overtired.”
He was exhausted and his temper was fraying badly. “You know as well as I do that we can’t make more of this gear. You throw it around because you think there’s an unlimited supply of it, but that’s just not true anymore.”
“Sarge is right, Lex,” Tank added. “It didn’t matter what we broke before, the technicians could just give us new gear, but it’s not like that now.”
“He might be Sarge to you, but he’s still asshat to me,” she replied dourly. Rolling onto her back, she pointedly ignored both of them.
He didn’t know why he was so irritable. The mission had gone well, and he was no more tired now that he would be after any high-risk combat, but this time it was different. In the past, he was part of a well-oiled machine. There were backup troops, supplies, more equipment, and a command structure with a plan, even if they thought it was a stupid one. Home was only a phone call away whenever he could make the call. Even in the chaos of combat, there was order around them. When they returned to base there was always a hot meal, a shower and a bed waiting for them. Other than to clean their gear, every engagement ended when they left the field and returned to their temporary home. There they were surrounded by men and women who understood their job and the headaches it caused. There was a camaraderie and an easygoing support system that largely went unspoken, but it was always there when it was needed. Now they were a combat squad living in a civilian dormitory, and he made mental note to ask Ark to get them their own space. They needed somewhere they could decompress, and a filthy dormitory filled with civvies wasn’t working for him.
Tank was ordering people to clean up the room when Bill walked in. Seeing him still standing next to Lexie’s bunk, he strode over. “We need to talk about the mission to NORAD.”
Bill’s words only raised his frustration levels another notch. “I need to go to Seattle first.”
“No can do,” Bill replied adamantly. “Seattle is a thousand miles away, and it’s another fourteen hundred to get to NORAD from there.”
Being asked to delay finding his wife and unborn son raised his irritation to anger, and he whirled to face Bill. “No fucking way! I’m not delaying Seattle again. I was okay with going to the nest because Ark wanted the data, and Jo asked us to go to Albuquerque. We needed a short mission to train, but we did good and we’re going to Seattle next.”
“Do you just not wanna do what I think needs doing?”
What was his real objection to Bill? The man hadn’t done anything wrong. He wanted to deal with the bigger problem and that wasn’t a bad thing, so why was he being so resistant? Ark had followed Bill into the room and he wheeled himself between them. Ignoring him, they continued to glare at one another. Something about Bill pissed him off. Maybe it was his rank, or perhaps he blamed the collapse of the military on the brass. Whatever it was, and even if it was unfair, he was directing all of his pent up rage at Bill.
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Through gritted teeth, he said, “I have to find my wife and unborn son.”
Bill’s equally angry face softened immediately. “I understand why that’s a priority for you, but they bombed Seattle. They’re gone, son.”
A sharp feeling of grief gripped him, but it quickly turned into more anger. “You don’t fucking know that.” Defiantly jutting out his jaw, he said, “We’re going to Seattle. Full stop.”
“If we go to Seattle first then, assuming we travel two hundred and fifty miles a day, we won’t make it to NORAD for at least two weeks. What if more bombs are dropped? Do you want really want those lives on your conscience?”
Bill was playing him and he knew it. “I’m not responsible for what NORAD do, so don’t fuck with me.”
Ark raised his damaged hands, reminding him just how much he’d lost even before the critters had shown up. “Look, guys, you’re focusing on the wrong problem. It’s a three-week mission to go to Seattle, NORAD, and then to come back here. You should be planning. We need to decide on vehicles, accompanying supplies, assignments, spares, medical support, you know the drill.”
Immediately drawn in by Ark’s way of thinking, Bill nodded. “This is only a recon mission, so we need enough weapons and ammo to defend. I don’t want us engaging if we can avoid it. We need to cover the distance ASAP, find out what we need to know and bug out. We don’t have enough navs or soldiers to mount any sort of attack yet. If NORAD is still operational then maybe we can use their missiles against the nest, but right now we don’t even know what arsenal we have at hand.”
“What about acoustic jamming?” Ark asked. “Dayton’s team think the critters are only a weapon controlled by a master. They suspect they’re receiving a signal from somewhere, possibly the nest.”
“I’ve spoken to Candy in the weapons research team. She says that until they have some idea of the frequency there’s nothing they can do. It’s gonna take a lot more testing.”
He hadn’t heard that the critters might only be a weapon, and it put a completely different spin on their combat efforts. If the critters were controlled by something else then they weren’t the primary target. It meant they were risking their lives fighting against a weapon and not the shooter. You never defeated an enemy by only destroying their weapons. They could always get more.
“Does that mean we haven’t identified the primary target yet?”
Giving him a worried look, Bill replied, “No, and that’s why we need more data. Plus NORAD have control of the satellites, and without them we’ll lose radio contact with any navs that are outside of the wire.”
Ark nodded. “It’s true, Leon. If the satellite orbits aren’t maintained then they’ll slowly degrade. NORAD needs to stay operational and, if isn’t now, then getting it back online has to be a priority.”
None of this talk was getting him any closer to Seattle. If anything, Bill and Ark were persuading him they needed to travel to NORAD first. Once again, he thought they had too many high priority missions and not enough skilled people. He didn’t have time to worry about training more people to become Navigators, and he hoped Bill had a solution.
“What about getting more people trained as navs?”
Sounding as frustrated as he felt, Bill asked sharply, “Like who?”
“The preppers?”
“No can do,” Bill replied bluntly. “We only have a thousand sets of the nav gear. If we train the preppers, we’ve got no guarantee they’ll stay with us, and if they leave with the gear then it’s wasted.”
Lexie hung her head over the edge of her bunk. “That’s true, Leon. The gear doesn’t maintain itself. It was one of the reasons the army didn’t like it. They said it wasn’t rugged enough for combat conditions.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “That and the fact it drinks power. You should include that in your holiday plan. You’re gonna need generators.”
Bill clearly didn’t plan to use the preppers as an army and that at least settled one of his concerns. He didn’t want Bill to become a quasi-dictator with control of an army of fanatics. It wasn’t that he thought Bill was a bad guy; he just didn’t want to become part of a machine he didn’t agree to join. The Navigator gear would keep them all alive, and he didn’t want to lose access to it. With everything that had happened, his need for control was in overdrive and he wasn’t handing it over to Bill.
Glancing at Lexie, he said dourly, “We’re gonna need generators, Lexie. You’re coming too.” Focusing back on Bill, he asked, “So, you don’t plan to use the preppers as an army?”
“Yes, I do, but not one we control or that are based in CaliTech. We need them to disrupt the critters. Maybe some of them might be viable as navs, but then they’ll have to be here…with us.”
Ark wheeled himself towards a table at the end of the room. “C’mon, we’ve got a mission to plan.”
Following Ark, he grumbled, “We’re still going to Seattle first.”
Bill sighed. “Roger that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Bad hair day (Shirley)
Every corridor and room looked the same. Brightly lit by the goo adhering to floor and walls, many had the lumps she now knew were people. Occasionally she would hear them cry out or sob, but she’d quickly learned to close her mind to their desperation. There was nothing she could do and she felt strangely detached.
After the first few corridors, she’d stopped resisting being herded deeper into the chambers beneath the pyramid. All she knew was that every corridor led to another in a seemingly endless downward path. Although initially she was frightened, now being covered in the sticky membranes she was being forced to climb through, she was more annoyed that her usually perfectly coiffured hair was plastered to her scalp. It took a lot of time to add body and color to her greying locks, and she didn’t want to die looking like such a fright.
Underneath her shallow thoughts she was still terrified, but she was so familiar with burying her fears, she didn’t even know where that emotion lived inside of her. Choosing not to find her fear, she continued to worry about her ruined hair.
Finally, she arrived in a chamber that was ten times the size of any she’d seen on her journey there. Like the others, it was brightly lit by the goo, but there were no people buried inside its smooth walls. As if in respect, the creatures lined the walls and ceiling behind her, effectively blocking the entrance she’d just slid through.
In the middle of the room was a thing she didn’t recognize as being alive until it moved. It had multiple heads, all attached to long, black rubbery necks, weaving so slowly it took a moment for her to realize they were moving at all. Its body appeared to be composed of many bodies, all stacked and merged to form one bulbous, uneven mass that gently pulsed with energy. The limbs were spider like, only they were as thick as tree trunks and spread out at all angles. The clawed foot closest to her was enormous, and yet it still ended in three razor sharp points. The substantial creature appeared to be a blend of all of the other types of creatures, as if it had swallowed them whole and they were fighting to escape.
Unsure what to do next, she said questioningly, “Hello?”
The creature emitted a howling static sound from its many heads, and she clutched at her ears desperate to mute the noise. When she pulled her hands away from her head, the chamber began to reverberate with whispering, and she turned around looking for the source of the sound.
“Help.”
“Home.”
“Kill me.”
She couldn’t see where the voices were coming from and she turned to face the monster again. Slowly stepping forward, and with nowhere else to go, she cautiously walked closer to the body of the beast. There were faces on the merged bodies that formed its gargantuan torso. Unlike a critter, these faces were more than a molded copy of human features. These still had moving mouths and the unique faces of their original owner. Above one moving mouth an eye opened, revealing a dark brown iris inside a bloodshot eyeball.
“Run,” the mouth whispered
urgently.
“I…I can’t. There’s no way out.”
“Then die,” it whispered sadly.
The one-eyed face buried in the body of the beast was telling her to kill herself. She would have died with Clark if the creature hadn’t grabbed her. Death didn’t scare her as much as the rubbery insects, but she wasn’t sure how she could kill herself in a room containing only her captors and sticky walls.
“W…who are you?”
The mouth moaned as if in pain. “It wants knowledge.”
“W…why?”
“Domination,” the mouth groaned.
More voices began to whimper and whisper. When she could catch a few words, they were rattling off disconnected information. Math formulas, facts, figures, medical terms, locations, and many other things she didn’t understand. It was as if they were downloading anything they knew, and she assumed the monster was learning everything there was to know about the human race. Up until that moment, she’d assumed the insect-like creatures were their enemy, but now she slowly understood that the monster in front of her was the one that was in control.
Without her noticing, the monster’s clawed leg had wrapped around her and pain ripped through her body. It was as if every cell was rebelling and she began to burn without being on fire. The clawed leg was pulling her closer to its misshapen torso, until her body touched it and she began to merge with the others. Finally unable to contain her fear, and overwhelmed by pain, she began screaming. When the voices of her fellow victims joined hers, their shared cries amplified in the hollow chamber.
As she entered the world of the monster, the image of a human male with craggy features appeared in her mind, and she knew without being told that his name was Steve. He wanted to learn everything she knew. He would use that knowledge to take complete control of the human race and the planet they’d once called their own. Despite her fear and the pain of being absorbed, all she could think about was her hair.
