Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The

by Molstad, Stephen

  It was murky dawn outside. There was a roar of jets in the air and the screeching death throes of the tower behind them. Reg loaded the flare gun he’d been carrying and shot one flare after another into the air as they ran into the desert, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the ship.

  “Where’s Sutton?” Edward yelled, carrying the case with great care. Despite all the mayhem surrounding him, he kept his attention focused on making certain the case wasn’t jostled or dropped. As they hurried away from the tower, Fadeela ran up alongside Reg.

  “Okay, that was my part of the plan,” she told him. “I got us into the ship and outside with the silver box. The rest is up to you.”

  Right on cue, a growling noise came rumbling toward them, and soon they saw the headlights of the Mercedes truck. Sutton pulled up and skidded to a stop.

  “We’re being bombed!” he screamed. “Whose idea was this?” Reg helped Tye climb into the front seat, then jumped in himself. Remi helped the others pile into the back. When they were all aboard, they shouted in one voice at the driver: “Go!”

  Sutton was spitting mad. “This is Faisal’s doing, isn’t it? If I get my hands on that bastard, I’ll tear him apart. Here we are trying to save his damnable country, and he starts bombing us. Remi and I were nearly blown to bits out here while you lot were lolly-gagging inside. And what happened to you?” he asked Tye. “What’s that under your shirt?”

  ‘Trouble ahead!” Reg called, pointing out the front window. Straight in front of them, standing atop a sand dune, was a fully armored alien warrior. It raised its arm into the firing position and pointed its finger at the truck. Everyone ducked, but there was no blast of light. The creature merely stood there watching the truck come closer. After a moment of hesitation, it lowered its head and charged the Mercedes. Remi, riding on top of the cab, fired his rocket launcher, and the warrior’s bioarmor blew apart a half second before Sutton smashed into it with the truck’s battering ram. The tires trampled over the body. Turning an alien into roadkill did wonders for Sutton’s mood.

  “Take that, you ugly piece of crap,” he bellowed. He turned to his passengers with an exhilarated smile on his face. “That felt rather good.”

  “I’m glad you think so because here comes another one!” Tye said. As before, one of the exoskeletal beasts had them dead to rights. It pointed its long finger at the grille of the speeding truck, but did nothing.

  “They’re not firing at us,” Reg noticed. “They must be afraid of hitting this.” He patted the lump under Tye’s shirt. Ali opened up with his field gun as Remi launched another bazooka shell. The creature was torn to pieces. Sutton steered around it.

  “You’re right,” Tye realized. “That’s exactly it. They’re afraid to hit Big Mama. And they all know where she is. They can feel her.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Who is Big Mama?” Sutton asked. Tye tore open his shirt and introduced them. When he saw the gelatinous lump of biomatter throbbing and glowing phosphorescent against Tye’s bleeding stomach, Sutton nearly jumped out of the moving vehicle.

  “Oh my God, what is that thing?”

  “Big Mama is sort of like a brain. She directs traffic for the aliens, lets them know where they’re at.”

  Sutton was disgusted. “It’s a brain? You took a brain? Get rid of it!”

  “Watch out!” Another alien stepped into the truck’s path. It didn’t hesitate as the others had done, but charged immediately toward the Mercedes’s headlights.

  “Bring it on, bug boy!” Sutton yelled. Instead of trying to steer around the creature, he veered directly toward it, spoiling for another head-on collision. He was expecting Remi to use his rocket launcher again, but there hadn’t been time to reload. The creature lowered its head like a bull, and there was a thunderous crack when it collided with the steel bar of the truck’s battering ram. Fragments of the head-thorax shell flew high into the air, but they didn’t feel the creature’s body under their tires.

  “It’s hanging on,” Remi shouted from his perch. The big Ethiopian scooted himself to the driver’s side of the cab to get a clear shot at the thing. Before he could, the front left tire exploded and the truck lurched to the side. A second later, the first tentacle threw itself over the hood and stabbed through the sheet metal. Sutton kept the accelerator pedal crushed against the floorboard as a second tentacle reached up and wound itself around the side mirror.

  “Steer,” he told Tye. He took out a pistol and started to open the door, ready to polish the creature off with a bullet or two. But the third tentacle was deadly. It broke through the windshield and smashed Sutton’s head against the back wall. Another long arm snaked in through the open door and wrapped itself around the driver’s body. Remi fired at last, and all the tentacles fell limp at the same time. The alien fell to the sand, dragging Sutton outside with it.

  Reg slid past Tye, took the wheel, and accelerated. “Check your medallion,” he said. “See if there are more of them ahead of us.”

  Tye’s mind was blank, still processing what had just happened. “Sutton’s dead,” he said meekly.

  “The medallion. Check it,” Reg yelled.

  Absently, Tye searched through his pockets until he remembered he’d left his last medallion in the tower. But the one he’d given Sutton was sitting on the dashboard, folded into a paper napkin. He unwrapped it and put it against his skin.

  “Not working,” he told Reg. “Still getting the flower design.”

  “What about that thing?” Reg pointed to the brainlike blob resting on Tye’s lap. “Does it show where the aliens are?”

  Tye studied the warm lump’s transparent skin and the mass of diamond shapes that were all gathered on one side of the body. He experimented with it for a moment before figuring it out.

  “What does it say?” Reg asked.

  “It looks like we’ve got several hundred aliens moving in this direction.” He looked up at Reg. “They’re leaving At-Ta‘if, and I think they’re coming after us.”

  “Perfect,” Reg said. “How far away are they?”

  “How should I know? I guess we’re just going to leave him back there?” he said, glancing into the side mirror and watching Sutton’s body recede from view.

  Reg kept his eyes focused on the rough terrain ahead of him, driving as fast as he could. It was a long way back to Faisal’s camp.

  16

  INTO THE HILLS

  The fifth day of the invasion began in worse fashion than any of the others. Reg found the road a mile before the Dawqah turnoff. He stayed off the asphalt, driving along the rough shoulder at forty-five miles per hour in order to keep the flat tire on the rim as long as possible. When they reached the isolated crossroads, the sun was lifting in the east. Several miles behind them, a massive dust cloud indicated pursuit by the alien army. The flat tire made the truck difficult to steer. Reg muscled it onto the pavement and pulled hard to make the turn into the hills.

  “Can’t we go any faster?” Tye asked, glancing behind them nervously. “They’re definitely catching up.”

  “Only a few more miles,” Reg said. “Faisal’s got enough firepower up on those cliffs ahead of us to sink a battleship. We’re almost home.” Reg started up the winding incline at an average speed of thirty miles per hour. But a mile up the road, there was a sharp left-hand turn that pulled the tire off the rim and nearly sent the truck and its lethal cargo sailing over the embankment.

  After that, Reg drove in a shower of sparks. The unprotected rim scraped against the road, wearing away by the moment and leaving a continuous scar in the surface of the road. There was no choice except to keep going. The rocky canyon walls rose up to enclose them, and Tye scoured them with his eyes, desperate for some sign of the well-equipped army Reg had described.

  “Where are they? There’s no one here.”

  “They’re here. Just a little farther.” The mountain pass looked like a completely different universe now that it was dayligh
t, but Reg began to suspect that Tye was right. They should have seen some of the larger guns by now. The rim continued to grind away on the roadway, and each turn was more difficult than the last. Ali climbed along the outside of the truck and slipped in behind the wheel to relieve Reg when he had exhausted the strength in his arms. They were six miles up the road, and the rim was nearly down to the brake shoes.

  “There they are!” Tye shouted. “We made it.”

  Standing in the middle of the road ahead of them were a handful of Saudi soldiers manning a roadblock. To the left, Reg recognized the field that had been occupied by Faisal’s army only hours before. It was empty. On the cliffs to the right were some jeeps with turret guns, but no heavy artillery.

  “That stinking bastard!” Reg shouted. He assumed Faisal had double-crossed him, that he’d evacuated the canyon and left him to die as a twisted form of revenge. But when the soldiers came forward, they explained what had happened.

  “The aliens left their ship and marched against At-Ta‘if. The king ordered our commander to defend the city.” They claimed not to know anything about Reg or biological weapons or a raid on the ship. Faisal was so sure that Reg, Fadeela, and the others would be killed, he hadn’t even bothered to tell his men about it.

  “Where are your vehicles?” Ali asked.

  The man said they’d been left with two jeeps, both of which were up on the cliffs keeping a lookout. When Ali had explained about the biological weapons they were carrying and that the alien army was chasing them, the leader got on his radio and called the jeeps down. Ali held a brief strategy session with the soldiers while the jeeps came bumping down the dirt trail along the face of the cliffs above them. When they’d agreed on a plan of action, Ali found Reg.

  “There is a road that follows the crest of the mountains,” he explained, pointing uphill. “It is about one mile from here. They have two jeeps. One will carry the weapons down to Dawqah. I will take the other jeep and lead them along the mountains. I will need the thing Tye took from the ship. They will follow it.”

  “Good idea,” Reg said, “but I’m the one who should lead them into the hills. You know the area. You’ve got to—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, a streak of light ripped across the sky and smashed into one of the jeeps moving along the trail, demolishing it. It rolled off the trail and tumbled down the hillside, breaking apart on road. The soldiers in the other jeep stopped and took cover behind their vehicle. A moment later, they suffered the same fate. A pulse blast tore into the side of the vehicle and flipped it over. A few hundred yards downhill, a pair of aliens had climbed one of the cliffs with their chariot and were firing into the clearing.

  Edward and Reg raced back to the truck. Reg climbed in the back, grabbed the silver box, and tossed it out to Edward, whose heart almost stopped beating when he saw the deadly microbes flying through the air. He caught it as gently as he could, then took off running uphill. Reg strapped on a flamethrower and came around to the passenger door. The translucent amber creature was lying on the front seat. Reg unfastened a couple of shirt buttons, pressed the organism to his stomach, then buttoned back up. A few seconds after he left the truck, it was destroyed when one of the alien projectiles smashed into it. Edward was already a hundred yards closer to the crest of the hill, running as fast as he could and not turning back.

  “Ali,” Reg yelled, “you follow Edward; make sure he gets away.” He patted the lump under his shirt. “I’ll lead them up onto those rocks to buy you some time.”

  Ali nodded and started to run. Reg crossed the road and headed across the field that had been Faisal’s headquarters. Above the far end of it was a steep outcropping of rocky hills. It would be difficult for the aliens to follow there. The Saudis on the hilltops began firing into the canyon. They were answered by flurries of pulse blasts. Halfway across the field, Reg heard someone calling his name. He looked back at the road. Fadeela was waving goodbye, half a step ahead of Ali, who was urging her forward. Reg gave her a farewell smile and a crisp salute before continuing on his way.

  The rocky ground was treacherous and steep. Reg ran blindly, letting the topography dictate the path he took. Weaving around boulders and leaping over ditches, he ran until he found himself hemmed in by sheer walls of crumbling rock. He tried to climb, but with one hand holding the flamethrower, he could only make it halfway up the wall. He turned to check behind him and saw an alien chariot coming over the rocks in the distance. He slid his arms out of the harness and tossed the flamethrower, canisters and all, onto the shelf of rock above him. Even with both hands free, it was a difficult to reach the top. The rocks crumbled to gravel when he tried to pull himself up. When he finally squirmed over the side, he found himself stranded on an isolated stone shelf, a flat rock fifty feet across. If he was going to continue moving, Reg had only two choices: Go back the way he’d come, or scale another crumbling rock face.

  He glanced around the shelf and judged it as good a place as any to die. He still had two canisters of fuel for the flamethrower, enough to buy Edward a few more minutes of time. He pulled the brain-shaped amber lump out of his shirt and set it in the sun, then retreated behind a boulder to wait. He could hear the aliens moving closer, stumbling over the rocks in their cumbersome biomechanical suits of armor. It sounded like there were hundreds of them. The waiting seemed eternal. He fought back the urge to spring out into the open and blast a few of them with fire, knowing that every second he could stall them increased the chances of Fadeela and the others being able to escape. He imagined they must already be past the summit and starting down the other side of the mountain. As he pictured them running, he suddenly realized he couldn’t let the aliens take him alive. If so, they would learn where the biological weapons were. He checked his pistol and found he had two bullets left, which was one more than he needed.

  The aliens arrived and surrounded the shelf. Reg listened to their tentacles scraping at the rock walls as they tried to climb. Then the first one lifted its enormous shell head over the lip of the rock. Reg swung his flamethrower around, waiting for it to show itself fully before he fired.

  Machine-gun fire came from the cliffs above. The bullets chipped away at the alien’s exoskeletal armor and knocked it back over the side. Reg looked up and saw a white barrier fence, the type that lines the curves of mountain roads to keep careless motorists from driving off the sides. He could see people shouting and running. They looked like civilians. One of them stood at the edge, a man who took off his keffiyeh and waved it through the air as he shouted down the hill. Reg signaled for the guy to stop making a target of himself before he was picked off by a pulse weapon. Before he could make the man understand, a dozen blasts of light flew up the canyon and exploded where the man had been standing. When the dust began to clear, the man was gone, and Reg thought he must be dead. A moment later, however, he was standing there waving and shouting again. He was shouting in English and seemed to know Reg’s name. More pulse blasts ripped into the cliffs on which he stood. At the same time, two of the aliens came over the edge of Reg’s shelf and started toward the amber homing device.

  “Over here, boys.” The shell heads swiveled on their thin waists to face Reg, who blasted them with a burst of his flamethrower. The burning skeletons staggered off the edge of the shelf and fell onto the rocks. That left Reg with one canister of fuel. He decided he would let them get to the organism next time and give them a chance to pick it up before he toasted them.

  Once again, the man on the cliffs was yelling down to Reg. Who is this fool? Reg wondered. And then he recognized the voice. It was Thomson!

  Reg darted into the open, picked up the organism, then returned to the edge of the stone shelf and looked over the side. Dozens of aliens were massed just below him. They were climbing over one another to reach the top. They looked up at Reg, who held the organism out in front of him.

  “Looking for this?” he asked before spraying them with the final burst of his flamethrower. As they w
rithed, he looked up and saw that there were several hundred aliens swarming toward him through the canyon. Arms lifted toward him from every direction, but none of them fired. Either they’d been trained not to risk damage to the brainlike creature, or it disabled their weapons, Reg couldn’t tell which. He ran to the base of the next cliff, stuffed the organism back into his shirt, and began climbing. Before he’d gone very far, there were aliens climbing after him. They would have caught him easily except for the bullets coming from above. Each time one of them got close to Reg, it was knocked off the rock by a hail of small-arms fire.

  Arab voices cheered him on from the road above, urging him to keep climbing. A strong hand reached over the last ledge and pulled Reg up to safety. It belonged to a wrinkled, elderly woman who looked old enough to be Reg’s grandmother. But she was large and strong, and it hurt when she slapped Reg on the back to welcome him. He rolled away from the edge and surveyed the situation. The defenders of the clifftop were a motley group indeed. Half of them were women and many of them were elderly. By the way they were dressed, he recognized them as Yemenis. The women wore a distinctive, beaked sort of veil, and the men all had broad daggers, djambiyas, tucked into their belts. Crouching behind their barricades, they looked more like a crowd rioting for better retirement benefits than an army capable of repulsing the brunt of the alien attack. Thomson ran forward in a crouch.

  “I’m beginning to wonder about you, Cummins. You pissed off everyone out in the desert, and now you’ve done something to make the aliens mad. They seem to be following you.”