“Lying? How in hell was I lying?”
I find a small notebook in a side pocket. There you go. I stare at her and say, “’From Task Force Jackson Labs to Major Thomas Coulson. Message synopsis follows.’ Sound familiar, specialist? Or was I hearing things?”
She stares right back at me, then tugs some of her wet hair away from her face. “Randy, sorry, OPSEC and—”
“Specialist, I’d like to tell you what to do with your OPSEC, but I don’t have time. I’ve got to get ready for an upcoming firefight. You go on your little secret mission. You don’t need me. You get to the Capitol and meet up with your dad. You’re one lucky gal, getting to see your father. I haven’t seen my dad in months. Not sure where the hell he is. I’m about to go toe-to-toe with a Creeper, while you’re getting ready for a comfortable ride to the Capitol. And you know what? I’m fine with that. I’ll take a straightforward mission any night than to lurk around in the shadows like you’re doing.”
The rain seems to fall harder and colder. I go on. “I should have known something was wrong, back when the train was ambushed. Because that wasn’t a Creeper that attacked us.”
“What the hell do you mean that wasn’t a Creeper? What was it, our imagination?”
Thor whines some more, going around in a tight circle. “See what Thor is doing right now? He’s responding to the scent of a Creeper. He knows there’s one in the area. Back at the train attack? He didn’t react like that. Oh, there was an exoskeleton up on that hill, firing at us. But there wasn’t a Creeper alien inside. It was either on automatic or there was a human inside. That’s why when the Marines attacked with their M-10s, nothing happened. Meaning the train was deliberately attacked by humans, either to get your brother or Mister Manson.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Wish I was. Why was that train attacked? For me? The other passengers? Or two couriers, one operating out in the open, the other in the shadows? Whatever it was, I don’t care anymore. I’m just a soldier. I’m good at a fair and open fight. I don’t want to fight in your world of secrets and betrayals. Not going to happen.”
I take my small notebook and put it in her hands. “There’s my journal. Hope you have a chance to read it. It’s going to be in your care, along with the dispatch case, my assault pack and Thor.”
“Thor? You’re leaving your dog with me?”
I take a leash from my assault pack, snap it to Thor’s collar. He whines some more and tugs at the leash. He doesn’t like being on a leash, which is fair, because I don’t like it either. “That I am. Where I’m going . . . I’m not going to be alone. There’ll be other fighters out there, giving me info about the Creeper. I don’t want Thor underfoot, have him get shot by mistake. There’ll be a lot of scared civilians out in the woods, ready to shoot at anything that moves.” My throat is tight, and I have to force the next words out. “You’re going to take care of my boy, Specialist, and you’re not going to fail me.”
I pass the leash over to Serena and she takes it. Her face darkens. “Damn you, you’re going on a suicide mission, aren’t you.”
“No, I’m not.”
She says, “You’re giving me your journal, you’re sending me to the Capitol on my own, and you’re leaving your dog with me. Sure sounds like a one-way mission to me.”
Thor’s really whining now and I catch the scent of cinnamon. Not much time left. “Not in the mood for a discussion, Specialist. You have your orders. Now get back on that bus.”
She tightens her hand on Thor’s leash. “Randy, I—”
I shake my head, gently push her shoulder. “That time’s past, Specialist. It’s Sergeant Knox. Now get the hell out of here.”
Serena starts to the bus door, Thor dragging along, looking back at me. I can’t look at my dog and instead call out to Serena.
“Specialist!”
She stops and glances back at me. “Sergeant?”
I point to her. “You’re out of uniform. Make sure you take care of that before you get to the Capitol.”
Her voice is meek. “Yes, Sergeant.”
She ducks into the bus, Thor following her. The windows are rain streaked and dark but still, I can see the passengers in there, looking down at me. A few seem to wave, and I wave back, and then the bus lurches into life, and I watch it head down the road. When the steam and smoke and taillights disappear, I pick up my pack and get to work, my eyes watering and burning, no doubt from the smoke.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Back under the tarp, I say, “Deputy, anything new?”
She moves a reddened finger along the map. “The Creeper is still moving along, heading right to Brooklyn North. It’ll get there in about twenty minutes. By then, only half of the refugee camp will be evacuated.”
“Your forces?”
“About a half dozen deputy sheriffs and local cops, firing where they can. The Creeper seems to be ignoring them. It’s traveling adjacent to this streambed—” and she traces a faint line of blue on the map “—and it’s not a Battle Creeper. It’s Transport.”
I nod. “A bit of luck. That means it’s bulky and moving relatively slow.”
I look down at the map, watching that thin blue line. I put my finger at a point on the map and say, “Is there a bridge here, at this point?”
Deputy Hanratty asks, “Kenny? You know that area better than me. What do you think?”
Kenny’s the one who made the stunning observation that I was young, but he steps forward and glances at the map and nods. “Yeah. There’s a bridge there. I’d say the Creeper’s about ten minutes away from it.”
“What’s the bridge made of?”
“Dunno. Stone and concrete, I guess.”
What a fine map. Wonder if those nice mapmakers from the long-gone U.S. Geological Survey ever thought these carefully designed maps would be used in a war on American soil. I say, “What’s the land like around the bridge?”
Kenny says, “Map don’t show it, but the stream widens some as it approaches the bridge. Up some from the bridge, to the west, there’s another stream that feeds in, coming out of a narrow swampy area.”
Good, I think. Very good.
Deputy Hanratty says, “Sergeant . . . what do you have in mind? Because there’s not much time left. Those refugees . . .”
I tap a finger on the creased paper. “All the men with guns that you have . . . line them up on and around the bridge. Also place some guns over here, to the east of the bridge. Take the best cover you can. The stone and concrete from the bridge should help. When the Creeper shows up, hit the bastard with everything you’ve got.”
There’s silence, and I know what Deputy Sheriff Hanratty and the others are thinking. Easy enough to be here and look at a map and issue orders, but I was telling them where to put friends, relatives and neighbors in danger, with a good chance that within the hour, some would be horribly burnt or killed.
Kenny says sourly, “And where will you be . . . Sergeant?”
I wait for just a second, to milk the moment, and then I say, “I’ll be here. In this swampy area. Your gunfire, if we’re lucky, will push the Creeper up to that other stream, and to the swamp. There, I’ll be waiting.”
“With what?” one of the men asks. “All you got is that M-4, like the old M-16. That ain’t no M-10 you’ve got.”
“Trust me, I know.”
“So what will you do?”
“I’m going to kill it,” I say.
The rain is coming down steadily, as I work my way up the stream leading to the promised swampland, I’m trying to think if there was ever a time where it didn’t rain at least three or four times a week. I quickly give up, recalling that even ten years later, there’s a lot of moisture in the atmosphere after a few dozen aimed asteroids from the Creepers flooded all those coastal cities.
A few minutes earlier men were working to set up firing positions on the stone bridge, some of them dragging in logs or boulders to give them more protection from the approaching
Creeper. There were a couple of flashes that scared me but it turned out to be an old stumpy guy with bad teeth and a gray beard who said he was a reporter from the local newspaper, the Times-Union, who had an old-fashioned camera that used film. Even in the rain, the smell of cinnamon was getting stronger, and to the north was a glow where fires were burning following the Creeper’s approach.
Right after the guy took the pictures, a line of refugees came by from Brooklyn North, escorted by a two local cops on horseback. I try to focus on the upcoming mission, but seeing the old men and women riding in the back of wagons, the boys and girls walking along, some of the younger ones, holding hands, strikes at me. There was another flash of light from the newspaper guy and one little girl stares and stares at me. She has the look of someone who has spent her whole life trusting the older ones to protect her, and who has always been disappointed.
Melissa, I think, my poor older sis.
Now I’m soaked through, my feet wet, and with my knife, pistol and M-4, I’m woefully underarmed. Out there is a Quick Reaction Force, riding to the proverbial rescue, but they could be a minute or an hour away. In the meantime, it was up to me, sixteen year old Randy Knox, who—in another life or another timeline—would be worrying about getting his driver’s license, or a prom date, or math homework. Not being in charge of a rabble in arms, doing their best to slow down an alien horror that was minutes away from slaughtering scared and shivering refugees from the remnants of one of the most powerful cities in the world.
I slosh along, M-4 in my hands, glancing behind me. I’m starting to hear the hiss of flames, and the glow of flames is getting stronger. Around me are birch trees and pines, blueberry bushes and other low growth, and my mouth is dry and my chest is pounding along something awful. I recall my earlier fib to Serena, about why I wanted Thor away from this battle site, and when I come across a slightly drier piece of ground, I kneel down and try to think of a prayer.
Nothing comes to me. That’s scary, almost as scary as the thought of that approaching Creeper. Other things are scary, too, crowding my thoughts. The Creeper at the train ambush site. No alien was inside that exoskeleton, burning the train and its passengers and the defending Marine force. The ambush had been a set-up by my fellow humans, so that either Mister Manson or Serena and Buddy—or maybe all of them—would be killed in a Creeper attack, no questions asked.
Then there’s my dad, in trouble somewhere. And my uncle. Did he send me along with Mister Manson because I was the best, as he claimed, or was I sent along so that I’d be killed, thereby avenging his sister’s death?
I get up, cross myself, knees soaked through. Too many thoughts bouncing around in my head, so I try to focus and clear my mind for the upcoming mission. Otherwise, I’ll be a crispy-critter before even having a chance to fire off a round.
So I return to my sloshing.
In the rain and ambient light from the burning things in the distance, I luck out and find a piece of land in the center of the swampy area that has a couple of big granite boulders and a maple tree growing nearby. On either sides of this rocky outcropping the land is swampy and muddy, rising up to sharp tree-covered slopes.
I check my M-4 and get the spare magazines ready for easy access, ready for combat. I lick my lips. Still dry. I jerk when I hear the sound of gunfire nearby, from the men and a few women by the bridge. The gunfire continues at a fair pace, and then dribbles away. Two explanations: either the Creeper is doing what I hope and want, heading in my direction, or the Creeper ignored the gunfire from the cops and civilians and plowed right through them, lasing and burning them all.
I wipe my face. My first solo command, and there was a good chance that they were now smoldering lumps of charcoal.
Guess I’ll know, soon enough.
The glow gets brighter, stronger.
The cinnamon smell is almost overwhelming.
Snap/snizzle of a laser being fired. And then a burst of flame, as birch trees a hundred or so meters away explode into balls of fire. The click-click sound of it moving along. Lips are still dry. Cinnamon scent gets stronger. All alone. More click-click sounds. From my school lessons, I recall other lonely men out there, doing what they had to do in the oncoming rush of danger. Sergeant Alvin York in 1918, facing down a line of German machine gun nests, killing and capturing more than a hundred soldiers. The pilots of Torpedo Eight off the USS Hornet in 1942 during the Battle of Midway, flying into oblivion in obsolete aircraft; and all but one dying against the might of the Japanese Navy without striking a single ship. Sergeant Paul Ray Smith at the Baghdad International Airport in 2003, fighting off scores of Iraqi soldiers while preventing a casualty station from being overrun, for which he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
The Creeper comes into sight, moving at a good clip, water splashing up from its moving legs.
My chest hurts, my hands and feet grow colder. This Creeper is larger than the one I had killed the other day at that dairy farm. This one is a Transport Creeper, with the same amount of legs, two weapons claws, and center arthropod. But the rear section is wider and deeper where there’s a rectangular opening, where objects get dumped in to be brought back to one of their land bases, such as pieces of machinery, trees, vegetation and sometimes people, either dead or injured.
For what reason? Who the hell knows. They’re aliens, and we know next to nothing about them—
Which is no longer true.
I raise up my M-4. Somebody’s been interrogating captured Creepers, somebody knows their invasion plans and goals, somebody—
Shut up, I think. Whoever that somebody is, isn’t here to provide supporting fire.
“Come on, you creepy bastard, come on,” I whisper, keeping still behind the granite boulders. I watch and watch and hope and hope—
The Creeper gets into the swampy area, and it slows down, as its legs sink into the mud and muck, and I whisper again, “Sorry, bitch, you’ve traveled all this way to get caught up in good ol’ Earth mud.”
I open fire, setting off two or three bursts of fire at the main arthropod, and I roll down and to the right, as the Creeper returns fire, sending a burst of flame overhead to the maple tree, instantly setting it ablaze. Pieces of burning leaves and branches fall down, and I fire off another couple of rounds, aiming right again at the center of the Creeper. I don’t have an M-10 with the chemical rounds, I don’t have a good sighting system, and I don’t have depleted uranium rounds, but I’m still shooting, hoping for that golden BB to penetrate the breathing membrane and either kill or injure the alien bastard.
More return fire from the Creeper, the snap/snizzle of the laser firing this time, and I burrow into the mud, holding my breath, feeling heat scorch the back of my neck. I flounder back some, hitting my elbow against a rock, and I spare a glance. The mud slows down the Transport Creeper but she’s still coming straight at me. I fire off one more long burst and my magazine is empty.
I clamber quickly up onto the small spit of land, underneath the burning maple tree. I pop out the empty magazine, pop in a new one, snap the action lever free and another three-round burst is sent down range.
Moving, ducking, shooting. Trying not to think. Trying not to wonder where the Quick Reaction Force is. Trying not to wonder if any of the cops and civilians back at the bridge might be coming my way.
Trying to stay alive.
Trees all around me are now burning. The heat is fierce on my hands and face. I fire again and again and the M-4 is hot in my hands.
Another magazine is empty. The Creeper is slogging through and closer and closer, the cinnamon scent making me want to puke, and I slam another magazine into my M-4 and the action snaps back again.
A snap/snizzle of the laser and I scream as something sears my left shoulder. I fall to my knees, nearly waist-deep in water, and I fire one more time and the M-4 jams.
Jams.
I work the action and it’s still jammed. Nothing happens.
Damn stolen rifle!
I toss it away, crawl along in the mud and water, left shoulder hurting like hell, soaked all the way through, my hands and the back of my neck tingling from the heat. I unsnap my holster, pull out my 9 mm, and I’m slammed in the side of my head as a Creeper leg strikes me.
The pistol flies out of my hand, plops into the mud. I scramble some more. Flames and smoke all around me and rain is falling. I think I hear other gunshots. I think I hear people. I think I hear a dog barking.
The Creeper is over me. I’m unarmed. Not much I can do.
Then I swear at her, climb up on the rocks and a Creeper leg snaps out, nearly cutting me in two, and I jump at her.
Jump onto the Creeper. I’m on the back of the arthropod, holding my breath from the stench of the Creeper, my hands slipping along the jointed metal, until I grasp a handhold, from some horn or antenna sticking out, and the Creeper moves around, and I’m so close I can hear machinery or fans or something inside whirring along. A weapons claw comes by, trying to pry me off, and I duck.
Nearly fall.
Shouts. Dog barking. Flashes of light. Gunfire.
I’m holding onto a jointed piece of exoskeleton with one hand, flailing around, trying to gain a toehold with my feet, my boots and—
My boots.
I raise up my right leg, lower my hand, grab my knife, tug it free. The light is pretty good from the fires and I see I’m just below the breathing membrane, and I reach up and stab.
Stab.
Stab.
The blade penetrates the membrane. The Creeper shudders. I hear a bellow, or a scream, or a pant.
I stab.
Dog barking.
I look down. Damn me, I don’t believe it!
Thor is underneath me, joyous and fierce in the mud, snapping up at the Creeper’s legs, and I call down, “Thor, break! Go away!”
Thor looks up, barking and growling, and I don’t see him again, as a Creeper leg raises up and falls down, crushing him into the mud as my bud howls in pain.
Dark Victory - eARC Page 20
