The Broken and the Dead (Book 2): The Merciless and the Dead

by Jay Morris

  “Leave the weapons for me! Run!” I yelled.

  Amy ignored me and Karen said “Oh, shut up!”

  I knew we were dead, but when it was only 20 feet away something incredible happened, something that others would later call a miracle. Random chance, quirk of fate, or will of the Gods I don’t know but it will forever be etched into the stone of my memory. A gigantic Cat-Defender bounded from the forest to our left, it took three strides to cover forty yards, and it tackled the Bear-Defender. The “Bear-Def” reacted slowly to the “Cat-Def”. The new threat was opening tremendous gashes on the Bear-Def’s side. Together they began to roll down the steep incline and away from our position. When they tumbled into the camp, the Bear-Def’s greater weight allowed him to separate itself from the Cat by throwing it a considerable distance but the Cat was back up in the blink of an eye and circling the Bear. The Bear was already showing ill-effects from the encounter, it was limping, or rather staggering, and it looked like it was trying to hold its internal organs in. The Cat feigned left, then cut back the other way and leaped once more onto the Bear, this time fastening its massive jaws onto the Bears face.

  We were spell-bound but Amy brought us back to reality by pushing Karen and me down behind the rocks. She had seen a large number of technicians enter the camp from several directions. They converged rapidly on the huge family vehicle there.

  “Let’s get out of here”

  Karen said pulling on my arm but before I could agree with her Amy said

  “Where’s George?”

  Day 43, Command Area Vehicle 1-3, 6:44 P.M

  “Insistive-Query-Composite-Broadcast (Supreme Director 1, Da-Nah-All)

  :{ Status-Assault-Units,

  Status-Defenders};”

  There was no answer to his repeated requests, he had tried to order additional Defenders and technicians from Pods near enough to intervene but those Directors refused to even acknowledge his communications. He repeated his requests for information and finally got a response, it just wasn’t the one he had been expecting.

  “Statement-Factual-Conjunctive (Enumerated-List [Assault-Units, Defenders],

  Negation (Bi-Conditional (Deceased, Captured))).

  The communication screen flickered to life showing Director 8, standing just outside his family habitation/command vehicle. It wasn’t possible! But there she was and she was flashing bright impatience.

  “Command-Insistive-Statement Conjunctive (Surrender, Status-Re-Task-Negation (Supreme Director 1, Non-Technician),

  Qualifier-Composite (Chronal – Delta (0.2),

  Conjunctive (Negotiation, Un-acceptable),

  Implication (Qualifier, Non-Acceptance) -> Termination (Supreme Director 1).”

  The Supreme Director sat back down, he stared at the screen and was hardly able to speak. He decided he had to know that his young were safe and that they would be un-harmed even if it cost him his life. He reached forward to activate communication at his end. He didn’t notice a single underling, running along the side board of the over-turned alien vehicle, nor did he notice it hop through the space where the driver’s side door had once been. Nor did he or any of the other Da-Nah notice anything ever again as an Earth shattering explosion tore the camp to pieces. It is unknown how many sticks of dynamite remained attached to the detonator but however many it was, it was enough. The dynamite ignited the Fuel bomb and they in turn incinerated all exposed Da-Nah. Those in the vehicles perhaps lived another three-quarters of a second until one of their drive units overloaded and exploded as well causing a chain reaction as one vehicle after another exploded. A mushroom cloud formed and rose hundreds of feet into the air, it was one of the largest conventional explosions in history.

  Day 43, Continued, Da-Nah Bio-Weapon Research Encampment, 7:10 P.M

  The explosions seemed to go on forever, but it was probably little more than a minute or less, we couldn’t hear one another scream. Giant fragments of alien technology and local fauna alike were thrown high into the sky, some right over our heads. The huge limestone outcropping behind which we cowered and held onto each other was the only thing that saved us I am sure. Eventually the explosions slowed, then stopped altogether and we were left only with the haunting refrain of dying flames crackling painfully all around us and down the mountain side.

  We stepped out from behind the stone shield, I don’t know about Karen or Amy but I know my knees were trembling so bad I could barely walk and the gravel and ash crunching unsteadily beneath my feet. My fingers gripped my rifle so tightly I’m surprised that I didn’t leave imprints on the stock. My eyes felt as big as dinner plates, the destruction was un-imaginable. For dozens of yards beyond the scorched blast radius trees were blown over pointing away from the center of the circle, Amy said it looked like photos she had seen from when Mt. St. Helens erupted. There was nothing larger than a dinner plate left in the blast circle, no bodies, nothing recognizable as a part of anything. The alien vehicles had been shredded from the inside out by their own power plants.

  Karen held her hands out to either side, as if could reach out and pulled it in she could understand it. “George?” Karen whispered, not really calling for him, more recognizing his sacrifice. Amy turned and looked in the direction that the Bear-Defender had thrown Tucker, she started that way and Karen and I followed. The colorful bushes were gone, blackened fingers from skeleton hands reached into the sky, I didn’t see Tuckers corpse. Amy pulled up to look around her, I stopped behind her, but Karen went a few steps past. “There!” Karen yelled and she rushed ahead and only then could I see that the bushes had been on the edge of a dry wash, Tucker had rolled off the edge into the ravine.

  We gathered around the body, it didn’t look like Tucker had moved since the defender had played toss across with him. He was face down in the wash and covered in ash, leaves and dirt. We rolled him over and Amy put her cheek to his mouth she whispered

  “He’s alive.”

  We tried to move him but even though he had probably lost fifty pounds or more he was still too heavy. Karen said

  “Amy, think you can drive the Humvee down here?”

  “If it will start, yeah I think I can but I doubt we will be able to get back up the hill, we will have to find another way.”

  “Then we will find another way.” Karen said.

  Amy nodded and rising she started back towards the ridge line, beyond which we hoped was a hidden and running Humvee.

  Day 43, Richmond Benedictine Preparatory School, 9:30 P.M.

  Doctor Mary Young Deer had seen a lot in her life and she ticked them off on her fingers, an itemized shopping list:

  One of six children, 3 boys, 3 girls and growing up in Tahlequah, the capitol of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Her parents made her believe in herself and in the Creator and his mercy.

  Getting a track scholarship to South West Missouri State she completed a degree in Micro-Biology.

  Medical School curtesy of the United States Navy.

  Kuwait, then Iraq in Bagdad’s Green Zone. Twice.

  Assistant Chief of Staff on USNS Comfort, one of the three huge floating full service Navy hospitals. Second in command of more than 1,200 med staff on the ship while it was deployed in the Gulf.

  Then Bethesda and then Norfolk, Virginia.

  Then the shit. The Taliban were amateurs compared to what Johnny called the Before.

  She had seen them up close, at every stage, beginning with zombie, staggering and stupid.

  Three days later, Z-1, fast, aggressive and smart but still human.

  Four days after that, Z-2, skin turned coal black by the build-up of chitinous body armor, some body parts were modified, like their eyes and jaws, others were absorbed altogether, like their sex organs.

  She was at the Norfolk Navy Base, it had been reinforced by 142 surviving Marines from Camp Lejeune, the 2/2, the Warlords. With those young warriors Norfolk Naval Station was one of the last military installations to fall, but fall they did. She remembered those l
ast marines, holding the docks, hundreds, no, thousands of the Before swarming them and they fought with the esprit de corps, the history of the Corps. Those boys died with their friends, they died as Marines. Semper Fi.

  She had made it to Little Creek Amphib. Base with ten other sailors, evac’d on a Mark V, Special Operations Craft, on loan from SEAL Team 4. The 82 foot boat lit up the dock with their 7.62 Gatling guns and .50 caliber machine guns, but it wasn’t enough to save the Marines. She heard those boats could do 60 knots, after that night she believed it.

  When Little Creek fell they had been trapped but were rescued by the remnants of several SEAL teams and a mixed squad of Marines from a headquarters battalion payroll section and a motor transport team. She learned the phrase “Every Marine a Rifleman” wasn’t just a slogan, it was woven into their very being. They had hidden, ran, fought and died. Those men and women were young, tough and brave, they had the training and equipment, but attrition wore them down. The monsters ground them up, like a Cuisinart and it spat them out one and two at a time. The glossy black monsters with poisonous saliva, rows of needle like teeth, and claws like 1,000 fold samurai swords, just as hard, just as sharp, they attacked them day and night, from every direction, and without mercy. She still saw their faces when she slept.

  When she met the Major there were only three of them left, a Navy SEAL, a Marine clerk typist named Crystal Johnson (who might have been the single toughest person she had ever met), and her.

  More battles, more deaths, more suffering. They rolled one into the other making it impossible to know when one horror stopped and the next began.

  Then the die-off. One day of disbelief, the feeling that it couldn’t be true. That the monsters were dead. The sad realization that if it seems too good to be true, it isn’t.

  The battle with the true aliens began and there was even more death. She knew the Major was fooling himself but she went along because there was no other option.

  Then they met the group at the Welcome Center and she couldn’t allow the Major to screw them over to their death, so now she was with them and things had only got weirder.

  She stood with her hands on her hips watching the bizarre convention in the parking lot. Two enormous vehicles had pulled up (well, floated up) and parked like giant, white, two story school buses 30 feet wide and half the length of a football field. She nearly had a heart attack until their underling friends poured out to them like it was they had just won the Super Bowl. From entrances in the rear of each vehicle came more underling, dozens of them. And even more bizarre were at least twenty tiny white aliens, a couple so small they were unable to walk on their own, were being carried by underling nursemaids (or nurse-males? It was hard to tell). Lucy, Gina, and Chase were having a tremendous time until all of them first saw a distant flash, followed by earth tremors and then the sound of a series of explosions like deep thunderous roars from some ancient beast. Everyone had been frightened and the appearance of a distant glow, like that from a western forest fire, certainly put a damper on things. But that was almost an hour and a half ago, by now things had relaxed again. Some of the youngest of the all-white aliens were sleeping on the shoulders of their gray caretakers.

  It was bizarre, the human voices of Lucy and Gina mixed with the strange buzzes, clicks, and hums of the white aliens along with the way colors that seemed to flash across their skin from time to time, as if they were being illuminated by Christmas tree lights. And THEN there was the smells, not the smells you might associate with human babies, but smells from the white aliens that would reach her, most commonly was either lemon-sandalwood or tangerine-fish, but she had also picked up trace scents of basil-cotton candy and in at least one situation chocolate-cashew-cat litter.

  From time to time the little white aliens accompanied by an underling or two would come over to check her out. They wanted to touch her, always gently but sometimes inappropriately. When that happened she would just gently move the offending paw to a less private part of her anatomy. In every case they wanted to be lifted up or have her bend over so they could touch her hair, they seemed fascinated by it. She supposed that it was to be expected since neither the underling or the Da-Nah (she remembered their proper name) had any body hair.

  She had no idea what she was going to do with them but they seemed content enough, the underling paddled about and then stood silently in pairs as they patted each other’s faces or shoulders. In many cases it was as if it was old home week. The underling did not use facial expressions except in the case of extreme emotions. When that happened their eyes grew very wide and little else, but somehow she knew there was more to this than she could understand. As the evening continued to darken and more and more of the white aliens disappeared inside the giant vehicles, Lucy and Gina approached and wondered if they could sleep in the vehicles with them but Mary said she didn’t think so, at least not that night. So they asked if

  “buzz*buzz*whirr*click

  and click*buzz*whirr*buzz”

  could sleep with them instead.

  “Umm sure, I guess so” she said. “Yeah!” went the girls, “fuzzy*hum” went the two white aliens while the underling stood by with Chase, both of them silently following the others inside.

  She had a sudden fear that something had happened to Amy and the others and that she would end up responsible for a carnival of alien children. She muttered a silent prayer to the Creator that they would return safely and soon.

  Day 44, Richmond Benedictine Preparatory School, 5:30 A.M.

  Doctor Mary Young Deer was exhausted, she had been up all night, walking post from the lobby where Gina, Lucy, Chase, two of the eldest Da-Nah and a dozen underling slept peacefully. Then out to the two giant vehicles, they had remained buttoned up all night so her duty was a lonely one. Better that than the alternative she supposed. For the 100th time she cursed the others then prayed for their return. Her prayers were about to be answered.

  Day 44, Richmond Benedictine Preparatory School Lobby, 5:30 A.M.

  Lucy laughed out loud and chased an underling around the base of an “ath-ah” tree, the huge baobab-like tree had multiple trunks that grew together for mutual support.

  “I’m going to get you!” she said in sing-song manner.

  “I’m not going to be gotten!” sang the underling back to her.

  Gina was playing an underling game called

  “Guess What I’m Thinking”, she was losing.

  Suddenly Lucy heard her mother’s voice,

  “Come here everyone! Lucy? Gina?”

  “Coming mommy!” yelled Lucy and she took the “ungotten” underling by the hand and they ran up to her mother.

  “Someone wants to see you” she said with a gentle smile and she stepped aside to reveal Elaine holding George’s hand.

  “George!!” Lucy squealed.

  She was joined by other calls from Gina, Chase and the gathered underling. The swamped George, hugged him and everyone saying how much they missed him. The underling seemed very touched and he thanked everyone profusely. After that they ate “Tsa-ka fruit” and drank Tang.

  They all lay in the soft moss of the underling world and stared at the sky, making a game of picking out animal shapes in the clouds, but Gina said it really wasn’t fair since she didn’t know the underling animals and they didn’t know Earth animals so she was suspicious that the underling were just making them up. As morning approached and some of the underling began to wake, George went to Lucy and hugged her again.

  “Lucy? Will you do something for me?” he asked.

  “Of coursey horsey! Anything for my bestest underling!” she giggled.

  He touched her cheek and said

  “Will you please tell Tuh-ker that it is okay? I was proud to do it for him.”

  Lucy looked at him strangely.

  “Ummm.. sure, I guess, what does that mean?”

  He began to fade away as Lucy started to awaken.

  “Don’t worry, he will understand.”


  Day 44, Richmond Benedictine Preparatory School, 7:45 A.M.

  Doc Mary had found a folding chair in the school, not one of those cheap ones either, a high quality one with a thick cushioned seat and back in an attractive forest green. She sat so she could keep an eye on the kids, the underling and the young Da-Nah but to be honest she could imagine no better watch mates than the underling. They seemed to be able to avoid difficulties before they ever came up. That and she realized she liked the underling, they seemed kind and exceptionally patient. Her musings were stopped short when she thought she heard the distant sound of an engine. She rose and stepped towards the dive that led to the two lane road at the bottom of the hill. The sound got louder, yes, an engine, not a Da-Nah vehicle.

  Moments later she saw a Humvee and she gripped her rifle just in case but her concern washed away when she recognized Amy behind the wheel. The machine was moving faster than she was actually safe she thought. It skidded to a stop not ten feet from her. Karen and I climbed out the passenger side and ran around the front to join Amy and explain to the Doc that Tucker was unconscious and had been since the previous day, a dozen underling appeared and surrounded the back of the Humvee. The underling struggled to lift him out and another half-dozen underling were required to do it without dropping him. Amy and Doc Mary both tried to make their way to Tucker but the underling would not be deterred.