“Got your target picked?” Mack murmured.
“Yep,” KC replied.
Her senses of smell and hearing were not as acute as a werewolf’s, but dhamphir eyes could see beyond the normal human spectrum, a little ways into the ultraviolet but deep into the infrared. The trogs were warm blooded. That meant they produced body heat. KC could see that heat like she was looking through a thermograph.
“Let’s get this party started.”
“SAMUELS, SEE THAT PINE tree over there?”
“Yeah,” the ex-cop replied.
“That’s your first target,” Pilar explained. “I think there’s one or two behind it. Be a good test for the power of the grenades. The rest of them are out beyond the tree still. Once you hit the tree, put one back by that hedge on the far left, and just walk your fire back toward the tree.”
“Okay, I can do that. Were you a Marine, too?”
Pilar snickered. “No, I’ve just been training with one.”
“Oorah,” Liam chuckled. “I take it I’m covering the other half?”
“Yeah. We should see some excitement when Mack fires.”
MACK SQUEEZED THE HAMMER’S trigger and couldn’t help himself but grin as the weapon worked perfectly. Next to him KC’s lighter 5.56mm cracked its first shot out. In the distance Mack saw a burst of blood spray. He detected one less heartbeat. Right next to his target a trog stumbled upright as KC’s round caught him in the shoulder. As it was reaching up to grab its wound, a second round from KC’s rifle took it in the neck right below the jaw.
Then, the pine tree exploded. Samuels whooped as he worked the pump and fired another grenade. As Pilar had instructed him, he moved to the hedge on the far left and began just randomly peppering the field with grenades. A trog pulled itself up from underneath the fallen pine tree and made a whistling chortle. Two of the trogs rose up holding what looked like rifles. They opened fire, sending short blasts of fire back at the Livery.
Those two trogs became Mack’s priority. “I’ve got the one on the left.”
“Roger that. Taking right,” KC replied.
Mack settled his breathing, took up the slack on the trigger, and sent a .308 hurtling through the skull of the leftmost gun-trog. KC did the same, but she fired at least three rounds to ensure a solid hit at that distance. To their mutual amazement a pair of trogs with atlatls stood up and hurled their javelin-like darts at the roof while two of their comrades dashed toward the fallen gun-trogs. The trog leader at the tree was firing toward the repair bay below them.
Samuels directed his grenade fire at the spear-trogs, but didn’t make any direct connections, but the explosions did knock the monsters from their feet. Liam and Pilar opened fire on the trog leader at the tree, cutting it down in short order. Mack flipped the selector on the Hammer from semi- to full auto. He sent a long burst into the fallen spear-trogs. He wasn’t sure if he’d killed them or not, but they stopped moving.
“What is that noise?” KC asked.
Mack heard it, too, a thunking sound. He glanced down to the open garage door directly below them. “Looks like the trogs have crossbows, too.”
KC chanced a look. “Son of a bitch!”
Their pickup’s hood and front right tire were peppered with crossbow bolts. Samuels could be heard swearing. He’d been tagged with a bolt. The shower of bolts had caused the trio of humans below to retreat from their position.
“There!” KC snarled as she aimed her rifle and opened fire on a quartet of trogs who’d nearly flanked them.
Mack dropped the empty magazine from his rifle, replacing it with another from an outside pocket of his ammo bag. He added his fire to KC’s. Between the two of them, they quickly dispatched the crossbow-trogs.
“Let’s check on the others,” Mack suggested.
KC nodded.
Moments later they were in the repair bay. Samuels had a crossbow bolt sticking out of his shoulder, and Pilar had one in her upper thigh. Liam was tending to Samuels, shielding Pilar from his view as she pulled the bolt free and tossed it into the snow. Her wound would be healed in a matter of minutes, so it was best that Samuels never know she’d been wounded at all.
“How is he?” Mack asked.
“Hurt and pissed, so about normal,” Liam reported.
“Did we kill those motherfuckers?” Samuels snarled.
“If they’re not dead, they’re certainly not happy about it,” Mack chuckled. “Liam and Pilar are gonna get you to the doc, okay?”
“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” Samuels agreed. He shoved the Mossberg at Mack. “Shot all the grenades.”
“I have a feeling we’re about to collect a few more,” Mack smirked. He glanced at Liam. “Get moving before he bleeds out.”
“Roger that.”
Mack slung the Hammer behind his back as he and KC made their way out into the killing field. They first went over to the crossbow-trogs. One was still alive, barely, and KC finished it off by stabbing it through its eye with its own dagger. Then, they moved on to the pine tree. They were both surprised when an injured trog burst up from the snow, pointing one of the strange bullpup rifles at them. It snarled something as it squeezed the trigger.
NOTHING HAPPENED! Samech-Assara stared down at his blaster in shock and anger. The mechanism must have been damaged when the tree exploded and toppled on top of him. For a heartbeat he considered using the grenade launcher, but he realized that it was unloaded. This was a stealth mission and doctrine for stealth missions dictated that the grenade launchers remain empty lest an over eager warrior accidentally fire off one of the tubes.
Samech-Assara glared at the two hyoo-mans confronting him. One of them was the giant who’d wounded him earlier in the day. His lips skinned back in a toothy snarl-grin. The warrior tossed aside his now-useless blaster. He pointed at the hyoo-man giant with his off-hand as he drew his dagger. Samech-Assara wiggled his fingers in an invitation to come fight him as an equal. To his surprise, the giant nodded agreement. The hyoo-man handed his blaster and a pack across his shoulder to the female warrior with him.
“What are you doing?”
“Little guy wants to duel,” the giant informed her.
“Yes,” Samech-Assara hissed.
The giant tilted his head to one side to regard Samech-Assara. “You understand English?”
“What?” the female exclaimed.
“Stupid hyoo-man, stop chatting with your female and let us embrace glorious death!” Samech-Assara snarled.
“He’s speaking English,” giant hyoo-man declared as he drew a knife from behind his back that looked like a short sword to Samech-Assara.
“It’s hissing and growling,” the female hyoo-man corrected.
“Yes, but the syntax and grammar is English, and he understands us, and he’s a ‘he’, babe,” the giant chuckled. “He really wants to die, too.”
“I can accommodate him,” the female snarled, raising her blaster.
“No, I’m curious,” the giant chastised her in the gentlest tone. “It’s not like he can actually hurt me.”
“That’s it! You’re dying now, and I will ravage your female when I am done!” Samech-Assara declared.
The giant laughed and charged forward.
Samech-Assara was an excellent knife fighter. The Paladins all said so. In the combat games The People played, only the mighty Rishon Kaf-Achadasar Efes-Efes ever beat Samech-Assara Efes-Echad in the knife fights. The giant was a better knife fighter. His speed shocked Samech-Assara to his very soul. The giant had been a good five meters distant, but from the second he first laughed to the next, he was bowling Samech-Assara over into the snow.
The warrior of The People tumbled and rolled up on to all-fours, crouched back, and hurled himself at the hyoo-man giant, but the giant caught Samech-Assara by the throat. Samech-Assara buried his dagger in the giant’s biceps, but the wound didn’t seem to bother the giant because he didn’t release Samech-Assara. Instead he brought his own knife up, and Same
ch-Assara noted that it had a bow guard over the knuckles even as the giant smashed the knuckle guard into Samech-Assara’s face.
He woke on the ground looking up at the giant hyoo-man who’d pulled the dagger free from his arm. “Kill me!” Samech-Assara hissed.
“No, you’re more valuable to me alive, little fellow. I’d really love to have a nice, long conversation with you.”
Samech-Assara saw where the giant had dropped his dagger. With a swift lunge, the warrior clasped his hand around the hilt of the weapon. The hyoo-man took a defensive posture, expecting to defeat another attack.
“I am Samech-Assara Efes-Echad, warrior of The People, and I die with honor!”
He plunged the dagger into his own heart.
Chapter Seven
Twin Lakes, Colorado
Thursday, March 14, 2019
“THEN, THE LITTLE BASTARD stabbed himself in the heart,” Mack concluded his story.
“What?” Teddy exclaimed.
“Seems the trogs have a whole ‘death before dishonor’ ethic,” Mack nodded. He hadn’t told Teddy the entire story. He’d wanted to keep the tale believable to a mundane, so he’d dropped the entire duel from his report. Instead, he’d said that he and KC had come across a lone, injured survivor who had committed suicide rather than be captured.
“On the plus side, I now have many more bodies to study,” Ole Ahlstrom said, rubbing his hands together. “Oh, the paper I will get out of this!”
“Do you honestly think the government is gonna let you do that?” Samuels scoffed. His left arm was in a sling, and he was feeling no pain thanks to a magical shot Padma had given him.
Ole looked crestfallen. “No, they probably won’t, but it doesn’t mean I can’t make the study anyway!”
“That’s the spirit,” KC praised.
The Bank was crowded, even with the bulk of the children, older residents, and some of the Hotel’s guests down in Teddy’s bunker. About half the town’s residents, men and women, had volunteered to fight if necessary. Night was falling quickly, and nobody knew if the trogs would attack again. Ole Ahlstrom had declared from his cursory study of the trog bodies that these creatures were well adapted to darkness, which meant that most likely they would attack during the night. So, a sort of war council was being held in Teddy’s living room.
“At least we’ve got some of their own guns to use against them,” Don Hernandez observed.
“Yeah, these are serious cutting edge military weapons, but we can’t use them,” Mack replied.
“Why not?” Don seemed personally offended at the very idea.
“We can’t figure out how to disengage the safety mechanisms,” Mack explained. “The whole trigger assembly, even the trigger for the shotgun grenade launcher, is electronic, not mechanical.”
“Oh, that would explain the chips!” Ole exclaimed.
“What chips?” Roland Rounds demanded.
“The trogs I’ve examined all have RFID chips embedded in the wrists of their right arms,” the biologist explained. “I bet that’s how they disengage the safeties.”
“That’s kind of genius,” KC said. “I mean, if they’re chipped any of their people can use the rifles, but since we’re not chipped we can’t. If we can’t use the rifles, we can’t use the ammo we collected off them.”
“Except the grenades,” Samuels chortled in a little sing-song.
“Yeah, which means there are little chinks in their brilliance we can exploit,” Mack agreed. “None of the grenade launchers were loaded. All their spare grenades were tucked away either in their fanny bags or on their harnesses. We’ve got eighty-eight grenades off them.”
“Good thing most of our shotguns are either double barrels or have three inch chambers,” Natty chuckled. “I checked.”
“We need a good defensive plan,” Teddy said leaning forward. “Mack, you’re the soldier here. What do you suggest?”
“We need multiple escape plans for one thing. We can’t hold this position indefinitely. Eventually, the snow is gonna melt, which means people who know about us here will come looking. That means the trogs are either gonna attack in overwhelming force sooner or later, OR they’re gonna disappear completely leaving us all looking like a bunch of idiots. I figure they’re gonna go with the first option. Wipe us out, steal back the bodies of their dead and all their futuristic high tech gear.”
“I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’m curious. Why is this happening?” Julio Greene asked.
“I can only speculate,” Mack shrugged. “Based on the fact that we’re an isolated community, off the grid, we’re a perfect test bed for the trogs to practice their skills on.”
“What are they, then? Aliens?” Julio was clearly upset.
Mack shrugged again. “Maybe, but I kind of doubt it. My personal theory is that they’re the result of some kind of genetic engineering. I mean, they’re a combination of velociraptor and ape, highly intelligent, probably extremely social, and they’ve been given definite military training. They’re weapons of war.”
“I think they’re aliens,” Natty spoke up, “just not from outer space. I think they’re from another dimension.”
“I don’t know,” Ole hedged. “Those RFID chips I found? Made in Taiwan. Their harnesses? Made in Russia. Clothes? Made in Mexico. Also, I found tattoos on them, on their necks. Well, I say ‘tattoo’, but they’re more like birthmarks. Birthmarks that happen to be barcodes, but there’s a string of characters underneath the bar code that are tattooed. Here, I took pictures.”
The biologist passed around his phone.
“Mack, is that what I think it is?” KC gasped.
“Hebrew characters,” Mack said, cocking his head to one side. “It’s a letter and a number followed by a set of two numbers.” He paused. “This one says, ‘Vav-Tishasar Efes-Shnayim’. ‘Vav’ is like the letters ‘V, O, or U’, and ‘tishasar’ is the number nineteen. ‘Efes’ is zero, and ‘shnayim’ is ‘two’.”
“You can read Hebrew?” Teddy gasped.
“I have a talent for languages.”
“Hold up!” Samuels chortled. “This troggy is named ‘V-19 0-1’? That’s not a name. That’s a motherfuckin’ serial number.”
“I THINK YOU AND I WILL have to make this decision,” Teddy whispered to Mack. In a louder voice he said, “Okay, that’s enough! Get some sleep. We’ll figure this out in the morning.”
The others grumbled but complied with Teddy’s order. He was still “the Mayor” in their minds and in charge. Teddy motioned for Mack and KC to come with him.
They climbed the stairs to the second floor where the bulk of the residence was located, mainly the children's rooms and the master bedroom Teddy and Vivienne shared. At the back of the second floor was a laundry room with the fold-down ladder, which gave access to the building’s flat roof. Most of the roof was covered with solar panels, but it also held an industrial HVAC unit and four large tanks that collected rainwater to supplement the well. The diesel generators were located behind a stone walled enclosure on the ground side of the building facing the tiny home enclave, which was looking kind of empty now that all the RVs had been jammed into the lot between the Saloon and the General Store. In fact, they even blocked off Main Street between the Bank and the Saloon and filled the road between the Hotel and the parking lot.
A four-person watch was already situated on the roof composed of Liam, Pilar, Iva Planche, and Chloe Hofler. Liam had climbed up on top of the water tanks since they sat higher than anything else on the roof. He was able to lie prone atop the tanks and scan the area with a pair of binoculars. Iva stood on the other side of the roof, caddy-corner to Liam on the water tanks, watching the opposite field of view from Liam’s. She had a pair of binoculars, too, and was carrying a Diamondback DB15 rifle, an AR15-style rifle that was chambered for .300 Blackout instead of the usual 5.56mm.
While Liam and Iva stood more or less static watch, Pilar and Chloe circled the perimeter of the roof. For Pilar that was the
simplest way to get her werewolf sense of smell the most coverage possible. For Chloe patrolling the perimeter allowed her to work off nervous energy. A lot of people had been surprised when the snowboarding server had volunteered to stand and fight, but before she’d taken up the snowboard her father had been training her for the biathlon which combined cross-country skiing with target shooting. She didn’t have any weapons of her own, so she’d wound up borrowing KC’s blue AR556. KC had swapped her own kit out to make use of the FN SLP semi-auto shotgun that was now slung across her own shoulder.
“God, it’s cold!” Teddy exclaimed as he zipped up his heavy coat and dug a pair of mittens out of his pocket.
“It’s supposed to get down to twelve degrees by morning,” Mack shrugged.
“How are you handling it so well?”
“I grew up in Montana, and I’m descended from Scots Highlanders.”
Teddy raised an eyebrow at that. “Maybe you’re part polar bear, too.”
“Eh, closer to sled dog really,” Mack chuckled. “You wanted to discuss the plans?”
“No, I want you to tell me which one is the best and why?”
“Evacing out through the bunker’s escape tunnel is the best plan because it has the lowest risk of exposure. The problem, as I see it, will be the trogs attacking, finding little to no resistance, and then figuring out we’re out there running away. They can move on or under the snow faster than any of us, especially the kids, can move through it. I’m pretty certain, given the relative size of their noses, that they can probably track by scent.”
Cassandra Case Files Page 14
