SODIUM:2 Apocalypse

by Arseneault, Stephen

  We left base camp that afternoon to begin our week long spy mission and strategy planning session. We found a good spot for our decoy gun where the fifth gun had taken a lightning hit. We still had the cable laid out to it, so the hookup was relatively easy. We decided to place a radio decoy as well as a smoke decoy with it. If we were lucky we could lure a fighter in and take it down.

  We were also able to salvage much of the other cabling we had used in our first offensive. By now the aliens had abandoned the downed ship so we were able to move about the substation freely. We scavenged other power cables from the area and strung out a cable covering nearly three quarters of a mile over to our Daytona camp.

  We hooked up Bubba’s machine gun along with our one remaining big gun. The howitzer was placed in a location nearer the substation and the remaining decoys spread out at quarter mile intervals leading away from us.

  Our preparations were all in place by the afternoon of the second day. We then began the planning of our second assault. The second water ship had not been over to the substation for recharging, but instead relied on the mother ship to come in close once a month. We had timed our week to coincide with what should have been one of those recharging visits.

  We would use the large gun to try to hit the second water ship during its recharge. After that our existence would definitely be known. With some luck we felt we would be able to get off three or four shots at a minimum, before the fighters could reach us. I could only hope that the weapon would be effective at that distance because distance gave them time to react, time to move their shield.

  After giving it some thought I decided that I would fire the howitzer at the same time and hopefully be able to draw away the shield and do some damage of my own.

  It was once again eagle-eyed Janie who spotted the mother ship descending on its smaller child. There was no doubt that we would be fully exposed. All of our work at building our home, our initial tremendous victory over the first ship, our hard work, and all of our planning were coming to a defined moment.

  We had a few hours to kill as the recharging of the water ship from the mother ship also lasted close to a day. I stood looking at the steeled faces of the others as they all watched the mother ship.

  The defiance in their eyes was exactly that as recounted in so many war stories over the history of Man. The true heroes stood strong in the face of imminent death, unwavering in their commitment to give it every ounce of energy they had, at whatever the cost.

  Their strength in turn steeled my resolve. We had come so far and accomplished so much in our little survivor family. It was now time to stand up for all Mankind and push these brutal murderers back into the blackness of space they had come from. Zero hour was upon us.

  I left the camp and made my way over to the howitzer. We had strung a coaxial cable from Daytona camp over to the howitzer so that I could securely communicate with David without giving off a radio signature.

  I had put on a copper screened helmet to reduce my signature further, but I still had enough visibility to aim and fire the weapon. I didn’t know if the helmet would actually work, but we were willing to all wear aluminum hats and suck our thumbs if we thought it would help.

  David wore a similar screened helmet on his end and manned the large gun. The girls took 30 minute turns manning Bubba’s machine gun with the lucky one going to be at the trigger when it all went down. That day was Rachel’s lucky day. David and I had taken our best aims when I gave the final command. The crack from both weapons was again deafening, but worth the pain.

  The big gun and howitzer fired at almost the same instant. As it turned out we were indeed lucky and our velocities were sufficient to bypass their shields. The round from the big gun just missed the smaller ship, but slammed into a propulsion disc on the bottom of the mother ship. The down blast from that hit, blew right into the smaller ship just below.

  At the same moment the howitzer round struck the water ship blowing a small hole through the side and a larger one out through the top. The side shot also started the smaller ship into a slow rotation. Neither ship moved position or made any adjustments whatsoever before I fired the howitzer again ten seconds later. This time I hit square in the center of the small ship sending a large plume of smoke, fire and debris upward into the larger ship.

  Again ten seconds passed with no reaction from either ship. We had taken them by complete surprise, but we knew we only had a finite amount of time before they would begin doing something about it. I fired the howitzer a third time, this time striking under the water ship and I spotted a plume of debris falling from its other side.

  The big gun was ready for another round and David let it fly. It skimmed the top of the smaller ship and again went directly into one of the propulsion discs on the mother ship. Again a back blast of debris came hurdling down upon the smaller ship. The mother ship then dropped slightly and lurched forward towards us.

  Because of its immense size it all looked to be happening in slow motion. My next howitzer round then found its mark releasing the same devastating powerful explosion we had seen after taking down the first ship.

  Fully one quarter of the water ship was instantly incinerated with the damage reaching up to the bottom of the larger one. The debris then did our work for us as it knocked out another propulsion disc on the mother ship.

  The resulting drop and lurch forward of the mother ship was all it took to end the existence of the smaller vessel. The five mile wide behemoth dipped down enough to crash into the now severally damaged water ship. The impact flattened a large portion of the smaller craft and sent it crashing downward into the ocean.

  Again I fired another round into the mother ship. This time the shot seemed to be absorbed by the larger ship, no doubt doing tremendous internal damage. At that point the fighters finally began to emerge. I counted 15 of them. And with the chaotic pattern they fell into I could only guess that they still had no idea where they were being attacked from.

  Our rounds must have been too small and must have been coming in too fast for them to get a fix on us. David then let off another round, striking the far underside of the great ship and damaging two more of the propulsion discs. The fighters then locked onto the tungsten projectile coming out the back of David’s gun. The destruction it caused behind us had given away our position.

  The mother ship had a total of 16 discs on its underbelly and we had managed to take out a number of them. Unfortunately, with our last rounds origin detected, we had less than a minute before fighters would be swarming us. A half dozen of the fighters came straight in and I was ready for the first one.

  The howitzer round punched a small hole in the front of it and blew all the guts out of the back. The empty shell of the fighter flipped over and crashed down in the water before ever making it to the shore. I could just make out by the distortions in the air in front of the fighters that they now all had their shields on and facing towards us.

  My next round missed, but I had a large backup target behind it. Once again the mother ship absorbed my howitzer round with untold internal damage being done. The next fighter in was headed directly for David. He waited patiently for it to come into his firing line before letting go. With its shields already in front the fighter did not appear to take any damage. But the shock of the force was enough to knock the fighter from the sky. It plummeted downward, skipped once on the waves and come to rest on the beach.

  My next round would not be ready for the following fighter bearing down on me. So, I triggered the first decoy and waited. The fighter shifted is shield down as a concussion weapon and began blasting the ground directly below it as it flew. I lucked out in that it went to my side on its way over to the decoy.

  My timing on firing the vertical gun at the decoy was perfect. I blew the nose of the fighter clean off and it spun violently as it turned back out over the beach before crashing into the ocean. Two other fighters turned back, probably in an attempt to protect the mother ship while one last figh
ter approached David.

  This time Rachel had the machine gun ready and David set off one of the decoys. The fighter turned towards the decoy and began thrashing the ground under it with its concussion weapon.

  Rachel let loose a five second stream from the machine gun, but the fighter shifted its shield and effectively blocked the incoming barrage from the weaker weapon. David then set off another decoy. The fighter flew over the second decoy obliterating it and again turned back towards Rachel. As the fighter approached with its shield up Janie had planned a distraction of her own.

  Since our encounter with the looters Janie had taken all the practice she could with her thirty-eight. She had planned her little ambush and had opened up from a hundred yards to Rachel's side as the fighter approached. For only a moment the fighter turned its shields towards her, but it was long enough for Rachel to once again cut loose.

  The ensuing stream of tungsten pellets sawed the fighter in half. The two halves flew just over David and Rachel’s heads spewing debris before crashing into the ground just beyond their position.

  I again turned my howitzer on the mother ship. Every ten seconds I fired a new round into it and every ten seconds it seemingly absorbed it. It didn’t take long before I realized that David was no longer responding or firing his weapon.

  I couldn’t give up on my side so I just kept firing again and again. Another minute passed before the mother ship finally began its assent towards safety with its remaining ten fighters following its retreat.

  I fired twice more at the retreating ship before flinging off my helmet and running towards David and the girls. I was desperate with fear as all I had been able to see was a fighter crashing in their direction. As I got closer the flames and smoke put a wall between me and my family. My heart raced as I ran.

  After working my way around the blaze I was able to see Bubba, but David and Rachel were not in sight. Small fires were burning all around from the debris that had fallen from the cut-in-half fighter.

  I called out but got no reply. I called second time and heard David at a distance. Another call and response and I was again running towards him. As I got closer I could see David bent over Janie and Rachel was crying with her fists clinched and covering her mouth. Again the goose bumps came up on my arms as the fear of loss crept into my heart.

  When I reached them David had teared up as well. I knelt over Janie and gently picked up her head. Her right arm lay in a pool of blood and she had blood on her forehead and neck. A metal shard was sticking from her arm.

  I tore off my shirt and ripped it into a bandage. It took all of my courage to pull the shard from her arm. Blood was everywhere. I bound the wound tightly and had David keep pressure on it. She had a small cut on her forehead that had caused the bleeding there and after quick inspection I could find no other wounds.

  I cradled her in my arms and carried her back to Bubba as David kept pressure on her arm. Rachel had gone ahead of us and had our small medical kit out on Bubba’s tailgate. I lay Janie down gently and began removing the shirt bandage.

  Rachel began cleaning up her head wound while David attempted to keep pressure on her arm. I could do crude stitches on the surface, but if she had an internal bleeder we would not be able to stop it.

  I had David pinch the wound together to keep the bleeding to a minimum as I began stitching her up. My extent of putting in stitches had been taking a few drunken shots at stitching up pig carcasses back in college. My stitch-work was good at the time, but it had been many years since I had even thought of it. As my unsteady hands shook, I began to stitch Janie up. I was done with my butchery in five minutes. The stitches seemed to be doing their job of holding her together, but she had lost a lot of blood and none of us were really sure of what to do next.

  The mother ship had pulled back to its 30 mile range, no doubt attempting to tend to its own wounds. The crashing fighter had severed the power to the big gun and Bubba’s machine gun so our Daytona camp was now inoperative. Rachel tended to Janie as David and I broke camp. We quickly began making our way back to Two Mile camp.

  It was getting dark so we would rest there overnight before heading home. Back at the bunker was where we could best attempt to care for Janie. With the mother ship damaged and at a distance and with our medical emergency we decided to leave the big guns in place. With luck we would be back to recover them soon enough, but at that time all of our thoughts were on Janie.

  I climbed onto our lookout perch in the tree and used the spotter scope to look back at the situation. There were several fighters now circling the beach and a couple of the transport freighters hovering just above the ground. Upon closer inspection I noticed that there were a multitude of the smaller helper robots moving about. It took a few minutes to notice that they were spraying a green fog as they moved around.

  I then focused on a pair that were moving around a large piece of a shot down fighter. As they sprayed the fog the material of the fighter seemed to melt away. It was as if they were trying to clean up any leftover damaged parts so that they would not fall into enemy hands. I next turned my attention to the water ship that lay upside down on the beach. It too had hundreds of the little robots spraying about. The same thing was happening to the remains of the other water ship just offshore.

  I wasn't sure why they were so intent on covering up their technology from discovery when there were only a handful of us left, but I guessed they were just being thorough. Why give the enemy any advantage when you didn't have too.

  I watched until dark as the robots continued their spraying. Janie was stabilized, but was still unconscious. I felt helpless as my little warrior lay there so badly injured, but there was nothing more I could do. As the Sun set and the Moon rose the helper robots had all been picked up from on shore and moved to spray the upside down water ship.

  The rage had been building in me since I had climbed the tree and once again laid eyes on our nemesis. There was a full moon this night providing enough light to drive without headlights and I decided that if we could sneak back into our base camp we might be able to get off one last set of shots at the remaining robots and their transports. The fighters had moved back offshore over the other downed water ship.

  Rachel remained with Janie while David and I made our way back to the Daytona base camp in Bubba. Power at the camp was out, but the gun by the power station was still functional. And if we could get the rapid fire gun on the back of Bubba hooked up to the power also we would again be in business.

  It took half an hour at a slow pace to sneak Bubba out to the power station gun. Another half hour was needed to connect the rapid fire gun to the substation and we were once again ready for battle. A substantial portion of the upside down water ship had vanished with the sprayers working continuously. The fighters remained further out near the other water ship that was also almost invisible except for the hovering transports and circling fighters.

  There were still a few dozen helper robots spraying on the upside down water ship, so David and I decided to send them a message. David would fire the larger gun at the transports offshore while I tried to mop up the robots. A few short bursts later and half of the shoreline robots were destroyed. David laid careful aim at one of the transports and pulled the trigger. The transport instantly exploded and dropped into the sea.

  The remaining transport circled the area below it snatching up robots as it went. It sprayed a fog over the entire area and then turned away towards the mother ship in the distance. It only took me a few more bursts before there was no activity left around the upside down water ship. The fighters turned away with the transport and soon disappeared into the darkness. I could not make out anything left from the far water ship and the one onshore continued to melt away.

  It seemed the robots had accomplished their work and there would be little left to fall into enemy hands that day. But David and I felt a bit justified at once again chasing them off. We returned to Two Mile camp to check on the other half of our battered, b
ut heroic family. The following morning we made our way back to the colony at first light.

  Chapter 21

  For the next two days Janie lay silent with Rachel by her side. I tried to persuade her to sleep, but she would not budge. Only after fatigue had taken its toll did she fall asleep in the chair next to Janie.

  I gently lifted Rachel and lay her on her own mattress. David and I then took turns tending to chores and watching over our fearless young fighter. She had risked her own life in order to save David and Rachel. It was something each of us would have done for any of the others a thousand times over.

  While I had attended church regularly with my parents as a child, religion had not been an active part of my life as an adult. I had gone to the occasional holiday service, but my faith was something that I had not paid much attention to. As I sat beside Janie on the middle of the third day I was startled by a whimpering noise outside the bunker door. At the time, I realized that I had been praying for her for hours.

  I was begging for the recovery of a treasured member of my family while at the same time feeling guilty for not having been better with my faith. I don’t know if it was from my prayers or because it was in God’s plan all along, but that afternoon Heinz had returned. He was much leaner than before and was sporting a few battle scars, but he was otherwise in good shape.

  I got up and let him in and he immediately went past me to Janie’s side. He began to lick her hand. Moments later Janie opened her eyes. I was leaning over her when she came too and the slight smile that she could manage sent my heart soaring into the clouds.

  I awakened Rachel and called David in from outside. We all welcomed Janie and Heinz back. She was only awake for five minutes before she dozed off again for several more hours. We were all beside ourselves with excitement at our good fortune that day.

  When Janie next awoke we got a glass of juice into her and had her nibble on a bit of chicken. I could tell she was in severe pain from the damage to her arm, but she was a trooper as always and didn’t complain. The stitching I had done was ugly, but it had held. And so far, there were somehow no signs of an infection. With luck we would have Janie back in our ranks in a few days.