Harden

by D. J. Molles

  How many primals had there been?

  At least five. That he saw, anyway. There could be more.

  Where’d they come from?

  He felt like he knew, but couldn’t grasp it at that point.

  The more important question was how in the hell he was going to raise the alarm.

  He raked his fingers through his short, black hair. “Shit. Sorry.” Looked at the man, then the woman. “Is there any way that you can think of that we can use to notify Angela? Or Colonel Staley? Or anybody?”

  The man stared with wide eyes and mouth agape, a fish on the deck of a boat, trying to figure out what the fuck’s happening. “Uh…uh…there’s a phone. An emergency phone. In the box. Out on the street. It’s like, two blocks from here.”

  The emergency phones. Yes.

  Sam nodded vehemently. They’d installed some hardline trench phones around the neighborhoods. A sort of rudimentary 9-1-1 system for emergencies. They didn’t run off of a typical telephone network. It was a closed network and no matter what phone you picked up, the other end was always the Watch Commander, out at the Soldier Support Center.

  “Okay,” Sam said. “Good. Yes. I need to get there. Okay. Do you have any other guns?”

  Both the man and the woman shook their heads.

  “Shit. Sorry.”

  “Excuse me,” the man said, his brow furrowing. “But who are you? And whose kid is this?”

  Sam considered what felt like a million different possible responses to those questions, all of which required a lot of time and explanation. He simply shook his head. “I don’t have time for that right now. Just listen to me. You need to stay in your house until you’re told otherwise. Shut off the lights. Stay in a safe place. Keep that shotgun on you. Do you have extra shells?”

  The man managed to nod.

  “Keep them on you.” Sam oriented himself briefly, found the front door. “I’m gonna go. Lock this door behind me.”

  ***

  The last thing in the world that Sam wanted was to be out on the street again.

  But he couldn’t hide in the house and wait for others to be killed.

  He had to get to the emergency phone.

  He stood in the shadowy front porch for a moment, trying to let his eyes adjust to the dark. He felt like he had to pee, and that made him feel like a coward. He couldn’t stand just sitting in one spot, but he had to be able to see.

  He decided that his best bet was to limit the amount of time he was on the street. That meant he needed to sprint to the phone. He needed to call the Watch Commander. Then he needed to get indoors again. Indoors wasn’t a perfect situation, but it was better than being outside.

  Shit. What about Angela and Abby?

  He needed to get back home.

  He looked down the street, his eyes slightly better now. He saw no movement, but that didn’t mean anything. The primals were stealthy. They knew how to use concealment to their advantage.

  “Just run,” he whispered to himself, but his feet didn’t move.

  He looked to his right, two blocks down, as the man inside the house had said.

  He saw an old light pole that no longer shed any light. He thought he saw the dull outline of the box in which they’d put the trench phone, posted to the side of it.

  Maybe a hundred yards.

  “Just run,” he whispered again.

  This time his feet moved, and once they started, once he left the fake safety of that front stoop, his legs started churning all out. He crossed the street and angled for the light pole.

  Panic chased his heels.

  Oh Jesus, you should have stayed inside!

  When he was about halfway there, a howl went up, almost stopped him in his tracks, but he willed himself to keep moving. If they were howling, then they weren’t directly on his tail.

  He knew this, but the animal part of his brain, the scared little prey-animal inside of him, didn’t believe it.

  Just go

  Just go

  He reached the old light pole.

  His worst fear as he reached it was that it was a mistake and this was not the right light pole.

  But it was. The box was there. He ripped it open. Grabbed the receiver of the trench phone and wound the thing up. He heard it buzz on the other end. His breath huffed in the microphone. He looked over his shoulder. All around him. The shadows were deep and threatening, hiding anything and everything.

  “Answer!” he whispered harshly into the telephone. “Fucking answer!”

  “Watch Commander,” the voice said on the other end.

  Bored. Perhaps expecting some sort of stupid domestic dispute.

  “L-T!” Sam shouted through the receiver. He didn’t know which lieutenant it was. It didn’t matter. “It’s Private Ryder. There are primals inside the wire. You need to get a reaction force moving now!”

  “What?” the voice slapped at his eardrum. More of an exclamation, than an actual question. “Shit! Private, where the fuck are you right now?”

  Sam wanted badly to hang up the phone and keep running. His legs were tired, but his feet were dancing, needing to propel him onwards again. He was turning rapidly, looking in all directions.

  “I think I’m just north of the Rec Center,” Sam belted out. “They already killed someone. They killed this lady…”

  “Alright shut the fuck up. How many did you see?”

  “Sir, I don’t have time for this shit!” Sam yelled. Was this guy really going to grill him right now? “I’m exposed in the middle of the street! Fucking get a reaction force moving! I gotta go!”

  Another howl. Close by.

  “Shit,” Sam whispered into the receiver, and then hung up and started running again.

  ***

  Angela had risen from her desk and was preparing to leave her office at the Soldier Support Center when Kurt burst through the door.

  Angela jumped at his sudden entrance. “Christ. What…”

  The look on Kurt’s face silenced her. Made her stomach bottom out.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Ma’am,” Kurt crossed the room to her, but then stationed himself on the other side of her desk. “Lieutenant Derrick just called from downstairs and said someone just reported primals in the wire.”

  “Primals in the wire?” Angela put a hand on the top of her desk to support herself. “You mean inside the Safe Zone?”

  “Yes, Ma’am, that’s the report. We’re going into lockdown.”

  Angela was already shaking her head before Kurt had finished talking. “Kurt, I need to get home.”

  “I can’t let you leave right now.”

  Anger surmounted the fear. She came around the table, her hands shaking. “Kurt! My fucking daughter! Abby’s at my house!”

  “We’re sending someone to your house right now to pick her up.”

  “No! I need to go!”

  Kurt held out a hand and placed it on her shoulder. “And what if this is a trap?”

  Angela stared at him, his words sinking in.

  He shook his head. “The call’s not confirmed. It could be a trap. Could be the Lincolnists pulling some shit. We’re going into lockdown. That’s the procedure that we have. That’s what we’re going to do.”

  Angela shrugged his hand from her shoulder, bristling. She drew herself up, put command into her voice. “Kurt. I am ordering you to get me to my fucking house. We will come right back here if that’s what you want, but we are going to get my daughter.”

  Kurt’s eyes hit hers, then ricocheted off. “Angela,” he said, with stiff resolution. “I’m sorry. This is a military matter right now, and I’m going to follow those orders.”

  “Are you going to forcibly stop me?”

  “I’d really prefer not to.”

  “Kurt, it’s my daughter.”

  Kurt’s face flashed with something like anger. “Ma’am, I understand that. But this is reasonable and you know it. By the time we get down to your car, Abby will be on the way. Y
ou’ll just be putting yourself at risk for nothing.”

  Every instinct in Angela’s body told her to run, dart past Kurt before he could restrain her. But the logical part of her knew he was right.

  She wilted backwards, sitting on her desk. “Please, tell me when they have her in hand.”

  ***

  Sam burst through the door, this time taking the half-second to work the latch so he wouldn’t destroy it. He spun, slammed it closed, locked it, dead bolted it. Gasped for breath. Looked out the window.

  Nothing out there.

  “Sam?” Marie said from behind him. “Are you okay?”

  He turned quickly. “Where’s Abby?”

  Marie’s face went from confusion to apprehension. “She’s in the kitchen. Sam, what’s going on?”

  From the kitchen he heard Abby’s rapid footsteps. “Sam? Is something wrong?” Abby skidded around the corner, blonde curls flying.

  Sam grabbed Abby and Marie and propelled them towards the staircase to the second floor. “Upstairs. We need to get upstairs,” he blurted. “Primals inside the Safe Zone. They already killed someone.”

  The image of the screaming woman being dragged across the street shot through his brain again.

  The three of them tumbled up the stairs, Abby and Marie both talking over each other with a slew of questions that Sam barely heard.

  At the top of the stairs, he pushed them into his room, then closed and locked that door too. Jumped to his closet. Reached up top and pulled down his little .22 rifle. The rifle that Mr. Keith had given him what seemed like ages ago. Why he hadn’t replaced it with something higher-caliber was beyond him. Perhaps he’d stupidly felt that they were safe in the so-called Safe Zone.

  How’d they get inside? His mind demanded.

  And he had the terrible thought that he knew exactly how.

  He checked the chamber on the little rifle, saw the tiny cartridge inside.

  It was all he had. It was the best he could do.

  Where are the primals now?

  When he’d been running, they’d stopped howling. Which meant that they’d found something else to hunt…or they were hunting him.

  “Sam!” Marie shouted at him.

  He looked at her, dazed. “What?”

  “I’m asking you a goddamned question!”

  “What?”

  “How’d they get in?” Marie demanded.

  The culvert. The drainage culvert. The gate with the carabiner clip to hold it closed.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Who’d they kill?” Marie’s voice shook.

  Sam felt exasperation hit him. “I don’t know that either! Christ, Marie! I just ran, okay? I couldn’t do anything about it! I didn’t have a weapon! I couldn’t…I couldn’t fucking do anything, okay?”

  Marie grabbed him by both shoulders. “Hey! Hey. No one’s blaming you, Sam. Okay?”

  Something rattled the front door. Sam heard it from all the way upstairs, and he jolted at the sound, feeling panic like static sparks in his fingers and toes.

  “Ssh!” he hissed.

  The door rattled again.

  Then pounded.

  A voice: “Abby! Marie! Open up!”

  Sam stared at his bedroom door like he could see through it, all the way down to the foyer and the front door. He looked at Marie. “Just…stay here until I clear it, okay?”

  Marie frowned at him. “What’s there to clear, Sam? Primals don’t talk. Let’s go.”

  Not sure why he was so reluctant, Sam opened the door and the three of them went back down the steps they’d just come up. Abby hesitated at the bottom of them, and Marie stood with her.

  Sam opened the door just as someone started to pound on it again.

  Sergeant Hauer stood there, looking urgent and pissed. When the door opened a crack, he pushed it all the way. “Private Ryder. Abby and Marie in there with you?” He answered his own question by seeing them, then motioned quickly. “Come on. We’re taking you to the Soldier Support Center. Now. Let’s move.”

  Marie pulled Abby by her hand, leading them out of the house.

  Sam came out, looking in every direction, seeing threats in every shadow.

  Sergeant Hauer jogged to the SUV. Opened the back door. Sam realized that Hauer was by himself. There was no one else in the vehicle.

  They should’ve sent more—

  The shadows suddenly converged on them.

  It was a flash of naked flesh. It hit Marie hard, sent her sprawling into the dirt.

  Abby screamed, short and sharp.

  Something had her by the leg. Yanked hard. Abby went down.

  “No!” was all Sam had time to shout.

  Sergeant Hauer was spinning around, raising his rifle.

  Nothing was clearly defined. It was just a tangle of limbs, and Abby’s blonde curls and frightened eyes staring up at Sam as she ran out of breath.

  He saw the jaws, the head, thrust his little rifle out and jammed the muzzle into the space at the base of its neck, and he pulled the trigger rapidly. The thing went limp on top of Abby, spilling brains and blood across her torso.

  Sam wasn’t thinking. Just doing. He dropped his rifle because he needed both hands to grab Abby up. That was all he could do. That was his only concern. He snatched her by both of her arms and pulled her upright, already churning his legs for the SUV.

  Marie was scrambling to her feet.

  Sergeant Hauer shouted something at them.

  Pale arms shot out from underneath the SUV. Latched onto Hauer’s legs and pulled him under like he weighed nothing. All Sam saw was Hauer’s hand, gripping the curb, trying to pull himself out as his shouts turned to screams.

  Sam shoved Abby into the open door, and propelled himself in right after her.

  Marie came in hot on his back, a tumble of limbs, everyone cramming themselves into the back as quickly as possible because the SUV was the only source of protection they had. Marie was making noises of desperation and fear; short, sharp bleats, as she turned in her seat and more shapes came out of the darkness.

  She slammed the door. Smacked down the locks.

  Something hit the door. Teeth flashed across the glass. The SUV shook on its chassis.

  “Sam! Get us out of here!” Marie screamed.

  The primal on the other side of the door started hammering the glass with its fist. If it were a normal human, the bones would have broken before the glass did, but Sam watched in horrified wonder as the glass held, then splintered, then cracked.

  Drive!

  Sam leapt headfirst over the center console and into the front seat. Knees and elbows scraping and banging into everything. The wipers came on full blast. The horn honked. He managed to get his ass in the seat and his hands on the wheel and his feet on the pedals.

  The window shattered.

  Abby and Marie both screamed, launched themselves towards the opposite side of the car.

  “Drive, Sam!”

  Sam yanked the shifter and hit the gas.

  It seemed like an entire minute passed in the time it took for the transmission to catch up with the revving engine and actually shift into gear. In that terrifying eternity, Sam was certain that something was wrong with the car, it wasn’t going to go, it had broken somehow, the primal that was feeding on Sergeant Huaer underneath their feet must have pulled something loose—

  The engine banged hard.

  The tires screeched.

  The SUV lurched forward, then jolted as its rear tires tore over the body of Hauer and the primal that had him.

  The wheel jerked in Sam’s hands, hit the curb, and Sam almost lost control. He tightened his grip, somehow remembered not to overcorrect, and pulled them back onto the road.

  They were up to sixty miles an hour, tearing down the neighborhood street before Abby’s screams finally coalesced into words, and those words made it into Sam’s brain.

  “It bit me!” she was shrieking. “It bit my leg!”

  TWE
NTY-SEVEN

  ─▬▬▬─

  LOCKDOWN

  Lee’s team took the airfield in darkness.

  Lee, Carl and Abe provided overwatch. Carl had been re-armed through Mitch’s delivery of weapons, one of which had been his Remington MSR, a .338 Lapua Magnum bolt-action that beat the piss out of Lee’s M14 in nearly every category imaginable.

  They figured that whoever had run the operation on Paolo’s people had done so either out of the Correctional Facility, or the airfield. When Lee and Carl and Abe got into position—spaced out along the woods southeast of the single runway—they found the place had only two occupants.

  Julia, Mitch, and his team, were stacked up in the woods off the front gate.

  Lee lay in the wet leaves, his clothing already soaked through. The rain had stopped, but big drops of cold water were still dripping out of the trees. The water ran down into his eyes and he blinked it away. It touched his lips and tasted sharply of salt.

  Lee watched through the scope on his M14. He spoke into the squad comms, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve got two. One in red plaid. One in gray hoodie. Both armed. Rifles. Carl and Abe, let me know when you got ‘em.”

  There was a pause of about twenty seconds.

  Carl transmitted first. “I got both. They’re stationary at the front of the building.”

  “Good,” Lee said. “Standby for Abe.”

  Another ten seconds passed.

  “Yeah, I got an angle on one, but not the other,” Abe said. “I got the guy in red plaid.”

  “Copy,” Carl’s voice mumbled. “I got gray hoodie. It’s on you, Lee.”

  “Assault team,” Lee said. “You in position?”

  Mitch came back: “We’re in position.”

  Lee took a deep breath, blew it out. He focused his reticle on the empty space between the two guards. He could provide a backup shot on either of them if Carl or Abe missed. He settled into the ground, melted his body into it, his face resting on his buttstock. Finger hovering over the trigger. He touched off his comms. “All teams go on my mark.”

  The two men three hundred yards away from them looked at each other and laughed about something.

  “Three. Two. One. Mark.”