Nina felt a little light headed. Perhaps due to the stench of rotting beef.
She shook away the cobwebs and turned toward Vince. He waited for instructions. She needed him to circle further to the east: a couple of cargo trailers over there could provide cover.
Nina used hand signals. She pointed toward Vince and then used her fingers to make a walking motion…
Nina pointed to Trevor, then at her own eyes with both fingers, then made a walking motion with her fingers, then motioned toward the building.
In essence, she told Trevor to peek in one of the windows to ascertain the situation.
Trevor made an okay sign then surprised her by waving a flat hand over his head.
Nina bit her lower lip.
Stone had signaled that he understood and then told her to cover this area…
Vince gaped at Nina. She held her hand in the air halfway through a series of hand signals but distracted by—by what? A memory? A memory of something that happened a long time ago. Something during that first year.
Nina closed her eyes and tried to remember but the ghosts vanished as quickly as they came. The act of giving Vince hand signals had served as a prompt to summon those recollections from the recesses of her mind, but whether those memories belonged to her or had escaped to her mind during its connection to Trevor, she did not know.
The sound of another high-powered rifle shot brought her into focus again. She finished relaying orders to Vince and he moved off to his left, working through the remains of abandoned cars. Nina acted to draw the enemy’s attention.
She loaded a round in to her M203 launcher mounted under the M4’s barrel, stepped around the grill of the overturned truck, and delivered a grenade at the enemy convoy. It hit between the Ogre and the tank. The gray-skinned creature flinched and wobbled as the shrapnel dug into its back, but it did not fall.
The tank’s turret locked on and fired at Nina. The pellets tore into the engine compartment of the truck. She fired one more shot that missed high and then retreated to cover again.
Then came the really big explosion and the turret stopped firing.
But the sniper rifle fired—and fired—and fired.
Nina came around the truck with her weapon raised. The shell-covered tank burned blue and green smoke into the partly cloudy sky, the result of a well-placed Javelin shot from Carl Bly’s anti-tank weapon fired from his ambush position on the far side of the convoy.
Nina could have sworn she heard a cry of agony escape from the burning vehicle, but she could not be sure. Regardless, the monks scattered from the blaze, two already on fire and done for. Caesar—advancing parallel to Nina—dropped two more as they ran blindly in his direction. Maddock’s sniper rifle finished off the remaining monks from distance.
The Ogre stood alone with only its sheer strength as a weapon.
Nina and Vince Caesar approached it from opposite sides. The monster alternated attention between the two.
A sniper rifle round hit the thing’s chest. It staggered and a piece of gray about the size of a dollar bill fell from its body, but so did the splintered bullet.
Nina whistled.
Odin and two more elkhounds came from their hiding places in the parking lot.
Two thousand years prior, the Vikings used Norwegian elkhounds to hunt moose and bear the same way Nina now used them to hunt the Ogre. They ran at the beast, barked, and dodged its swings and kicks. Not attacking, but distracting.
Vince fired at its head, causing the thing to whiplash.
“Save your ammunition,” she ordered because she knew they would not get another supply drop for two days. “I’ve got this.”
Nina dropped her assault rifle and pulled her sword. The Ogre gave her a glance but the K9s kept its attention diverted. Caesar stepped closer, pulled the Mac-11 machine pistol he wore—like Nina—in a shoulder holster, and readied to offer her support if needed.
The dogs and Nina worked in concert. She ran in, they barked and backed off just as the monster punched at them, and she slashed the creature across the knee with her blade. It appeared Ogres were more susceptible to edged weapons than bullets.
It growled and stepped toward her but Odin bound in front of it and the old dog nipped its arm, then escaped before the creature could retaliate.
With its attention elsewhere again Nina stepped in, hacked, and opened a wound on its back from neck to ass. A red liquid that tried hard to mimic blood oozed from the wound and dripped on the road. The Ogre howled and turned to her.
The dogs ripped its lower legs from behind. It stomped and missed.
Nina swung again aiming high to decapitate the eight-foot-tall humanoid. Her blade hit true, but stuck in its throat like an axe into a tree.
It gurgled and stammered. She struggled to hold on to her blade as it remained lodged in the creature’s throat. The Ogre grabbed the sword with its large hands and, with a grunt, pulled it free, shoving it toward her with great strength.
Nina—her weapon in hand—fell backwards to the ground but turned the topple into a roll and ended facing her foe from one knee.
The Ogre stood defiantly for a moment—then the phony-blood poured from its throat, down its chest, and to the ground. Even the brave K9s backed away from the foul-smelling bile. The muscle-bound monster dropped to the ground dead—or whatever passed for death among Voggoth’s children.
Nina recovered her assault rifle while commanding, “Vince, sweep around the back side and cover Carl as he comes in,” she then faced the meat packing plant and waved her arm. Oliver Maddock emerged from a hiding place.
Vince circled around the burning tank and crinkled his nose at the sour roasting smell emanating from the destroyed vehicle. The dogs sniffed at the corpses and when one of the once-human monks twitched they tore out its throat.
Nina approached the rear-most supply vehicle and used her sword to lift a skin-like canvas covering the top of the canoe-shaped vehicle with eight wheels. Underneath the tarp she found a nest of gray balls of various sizes. She knew these to be ammunition for the coral-like artillery platforms, the Ogres’ slings, and various forms of Voggoth’s heavy guns.
“Tres funk, Captain,” Maddock spoke in Welsh slang with a light heart as he approached Nina and the convoy. “Of course, Carl won’t shut his cakehole all day about hittin’ the bastard right-on like that.”
Nina did not care if Carl Bly boasted or what Oliver Maddock thought about it, she just knew they had taken out another of The Order’s convoys. She only wished she could convince herself that it made a difference.
“Arty balls over here,” she said as Carl approached the last remaining cargo-hauler forward of the burning tank. “What you got?”
He peaked under the canvas and his nose curled.
“Seeds,” he answered. “Smells like more goddamn nest seeds. I think The Order is movin’ their farms east.”
“Then that’s our next target,” Nina answered as the remaining two members—including a smiling Carl Bly—joined her alongside the road. “I’m just sayin’, I want to start hitting things that make the bastards say ‘ouch’. We’ve got bridges, patrols, and a couple of these convoys. I want something bigger.”
She gave each man a good look in the eye and then ordered, “Vince, Carl, burn the bitches. Then we’ll break down the gear and hump outta here.”
While Nina, Oliver, and the dogs retreated toward their hideaway in the meat plant, Oliver and Carl Bly tossed small canisters into each of the remaining vehicles.
“Fire in the hole!” Bly warned.
Nina walked backwards to watch the show. She whispered an imitation of a howl that might just come from the wolf’s head with ruby eyes patched on her shoulder.
“Aaaawwooooo…”
The canisters exploded turning the remaining vehicles into fireballs. A horrible screeching sound came from the transport hauling Voggoth’s seeds. The second vehicle ripped apart as its contents caught fire and detonated. Smoke from the burning con
voy rose a thousand feet into the morning sky, mixing black soot with gray cloud…
The Dark Wolves found a garage with several four-wheel all-terrain vehicles and siphoned gas from nearby cars. They used a couple of towed wooden carts to carry the three elkhounds that comprised the non-human contingent of their SpecOps team and equipment.
They traveled northeast for the first part of the day along a route that, according to Vince Caesar, followed the Santa Fe trail of Old West days.
In order to avoid the searching eyes of a flying Chariot the team hid in a farm house’s tornado cellar for an hour, taking that time to have an early lunch of tinned rations and dried meat. Later that afternoon a column of Voggoth’s monks backed by Spider Sentries blocked Route 50 around Spearville.
Nina, in response, moved her unit south and across a stretch of fields and rolling hills. They made slow progress and, due to several more Chariots scouring the area, abandoned their vehicles and moved on foot, lugging their equipment on their backs.
Just before sunset the Dark Wolves sheltered inside the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church at Windhorst. Nina spied a keystone dated May 4, 1912 and marveled at how the magnificent stone and brick building had survived not only time, but Armageddon, The Empire, and now Voggoth’s great march east seemingly without a scratch.
A little before midnight the K9s raised the alarm as a group of five human refugees sought shelter in the church, too. Nina noted that they were escaping west, not east. When the refugees told them why, Nina knew she had found their next target and hurriedly rigged a transmitter to contact air command…
Nina stood in a patch of warped, dying woods and watched the target through binoculars. It sat in the center of what had once been nine holes of fairways and sand traps. But now the greens of the Kinsley Country Club were cracked and brown not merely from negligence, but from the infection of Voggoth’s machines.
Most of the sky above remained blue, but overhead of the large structure at the middle of the club’s grounds a thunderhead of black churned to life.
The Order’s building stood 30 feet high and covered an area of 50 square yards. To Nina’s eye, it resembled a bronze and black snow globe held in a greenish base lined with bony ribs and covered in strands of yellow like a fishnet.
Cords slithered away from the centerpiece in a circular pattern resembling roots from a diseased tree. Rows of white fungi-like growths bubbled out from those roots, pulsating as if the sacs breathed, although Nina knew that to be a hideous irony.
She counted hundreds of Voggoth’s offspring squirming and growing across this farm. The entire field smelled of decay. Flies swarmed like deranged bees trying to pollinate the dead.
As she viewed those incubators she saw not only artificial flesh and gore but materials resembling iron and steel: a stark reminder that the biology of The Order’s machines defied any attempt to classify it as natural or alive.
Using her field glasses, Nina surveyed a pair of domes planted in the ground just outside the ring of growths. She knew these to be guardians that would rise up to face any ground threat. Further off, a tree-like dispenser unit sat ready to launch Spider Sentries at the first alarm.
None of those defenses mattered to Captain Forest because she saw the opportunity to truly hurt The Order. In a few days this farm would hatch Ogres and maybe artillery platform components, and perhaps worse.
Nina dropped her binoculars, glanced down to her left at Vince Caesar and pointed forward. Vince knelt behind a small camera-like device mounted on short tripod legs. He put his eye to the lens and followed his Captain’s direction. Coded pulses of laser light shot out from the targeting device and bounced off the big ball at the center of the farm.
Nina spoke into a transmitter, “Angel Eyes, this is Wolf. We have painted the target…”
Five miles back and high in the sky an F-15 barrel-rolled as it descended through a layer of misty-white clouds. The bombs beneath its wings glinted in the sun for a moment before the craft leveled and steadied course.
The female pilot waited for a target lock indication from the onboard LANTIRN system. When she heard that tone, she released a set of PAVEWAY II precision-guided bombs from weapons pods beneath the wings. The smart bombs glided away with their guidance systems locked on to the laser signal…
Nina dropped to the ground for cover as she saw the bombs fall at their target, which they hit perfectly. The center of The Order’s farm disintegrated in an explosion that began in golden flames and morphed into a cloud of brown and black. The thunderclap of the strike reverberated across the country club grounds and to the surrounding Kansas plains. The impact tremor caused a gray, dead tree not far from Nina’s position to crash over.
As the remaining pieces of the main structure collapsed into a pile, the buds on the tendrils bulged and rocked as if something trapped within tried to escape the embryos. Muffled cries—some animal-like, others closer to mechanical whirs—called from the field of dead.
Nina brought the binoculars to her eyes and delighted in the death throes of Voggoth’s children.
A shower of soil and biomass fell over the wasteland as the explosion faded. As Nina watched, she spied something amazing. There—surrounded by the brown earth and sickly tendrils of the dying farm—a bachelor’s button with its blue, starburst-like flower stubbornly refusing to yield its piece of land despite the encroachment of The Order’s sinister vines to either side.
A kernel of life surviving in the midst of death incarnate.
The roar of the F-15 swooping low to survey its handiwork drew Nina’s eyes to the sky. The plane’s wings rocked quick in a secret salute to its spotters and then banked hard and climbed. Nina saw missiles under its wings—the cockpit—the pilot steering her aircraft…
“You guys need a little help down there?”
Nina radioed Jon Brewer who responded, “Damn straight, Ghost Rider. Tear em’ up!”
Trevor sat in the forward seat controlling the gunship’s armaments. Gunner and pilot both wore night vision goggles.
Nina swerved the ship around searching for targets.
“Hold.”
She responded to Trevor’s order and held the craft steady.
The rapid-fire cannon whirled and bullets flew. Two enemy soldiers and the parked car they hid behind shredded to pieces.
“Starboard! Starboard!”
Trevor turned the gun sights to his right at Nina’s warning. A trio of Redcoats stood inside the windows of the electronics outlet, apparently thinking the darkness provided cover.
The ‘copter’s gun fired again. Glass smashed, parts of the store’s ceiling fell, and the aliens broke apart…
The F-15 fired its afterburners and sped east hurrying to return to friendly skies.
“Nina! Captain!”
“What? Huh?”
Nina shook away her trance and saw Vince packing up his targeting gear.
“I said, Voggoth’s boys are getting agitated over there. We should bug out before they figure the bomber must’ve had a spotter.”
“Yeah. Okay, um, yeah,” she regained her composure. “Move out to the south then hook east. Move it!”
Nina and her team withdrew from the Kinsley Country Club without incident, moving a mile south before following Country Road 30 east for about five miles. There they stumbled upon a dented but still working Dodge Ram with a cab on the back. Two badly-picked at corpses lay on the road alongside the truck, including one with a hunting rifle in his or her hand.
The canines and gear rode in the back, the Dark Wolves crammed into the crew cab up front, and they traveled north all afternoon with the occasional stop to take cover.
Early that evening one of the blob-like Chariots spotted the Dodge and opened fire with The Order’s equivalent of a machine gun. The team attempted to evade the airship on the streets of the tiny hamlet of Lewis, Kansas. The Chariot gave up the chase when Vince Caesar—behind the wheel—worked his way among the silos and cargo trailers of a cattle feed s
torage and distribution center.
After abandoning their car for lack of fuel the Dark Wolves proceeded north on foot. That night the team camped at the edge of Coon Creek outside of Garfield. Vince built a small fire and they boiled jerky in tin cups to try and moisten the meat. It did not work. They ate it anyway.
As dinner finished Nina sat against a tree and stared out at the field and the sparkling heavens above. She had never taken much interest in astronomy but could knew how to find the big dipper, the North Star, and a few others not because she held an interest in the universe, but because such points could serve as navigation aids.
On that night, however, she tried to see something more up there. She scanned the lights scattered on that black tapestry. She tried to comprehend that many of the armies who invaded her planet eleven years ago came from some of those stars. She wondered why the idea of alien invaders had not knocked her off balance during those first days when even the most veteran soldiers struggled with the idea of fighting monsters and extraterrestrials.
A cool breeze billowed across the field causing the rows of knee-high grass to bend and sway. Behind her the men sat around a dim fire and talked about the mission, what might be happening on the front lines, and sentiments for back home.
She heard Bly make a joke about how he should have been an accountant instead of a soldier. Caesar replied that he could not imagine being anything else. Maddock said he had a dream one night about being born a circus clown to which Bly offered a series of remarks that led to good-natured insults and a laughter.
Nina wondered about her dreams. She rarely had them. Or, at least, rarely remembered them. Often times she woke with emotions fresh in her mind but no idea about the substance of her sleeping fantasies.
She closed her eyes. The breeze draped over her. Her mind drifted…
“And where would we have lived?” Trevor asked.
“Hmmm,” she smiled. “Well, Philly of course.”
“Because that’s where you worked?”
Beyond Armageddon: Book 05 - Fusion Page 24
