“Come on everyone. Let's get you out of here,” Lumar added.
Someone started crying further into the room. Lumar couldn't see who it was, but for some reason that was the worst part of this whole thing. His heart sank. It was starting to sink in. This was it. Of the thousands of people who'd lived in Sangent this was all that was going to live through this. Maybe a few of the soldiers would still be here when they sent help, but he doubted it.
In a few moments the room started getting up and moving for the door. Once the whole group was ready Nate led them expertly through the halls to the hangar. They had to go up one level then around a few corners and back down again. It seemed like the hangar was as far down as the bunker where they were keeping the civilians.
It was a huge cavern of a room, hauntingly empty. There was only one little ship sitting in the dead center of the room. There was easily room for twenty of the things on the floor. The walls had ladders and catwalks going up three stories with platforms that could swing out to get closer to whatever the mechanics were working on. The hangar's ceiling went all the way up to ground level, about fifty feet above them. The emptiness of the room made the sounds of the Sarsaul beating away at the metal doors above echo all around them. It sounded like they were in the room in some dark corner or up among the catwalks. Most of the room was dark except for a few work lights in the center near the hovertruck.
The ship was a clunker and wasn't much to look at. She looked old, beat up, and in need of a new paint job. Her off-white coat of paint was chipped and peeling off. Most of the body was covered in rust so it looked more orange than the painter had intended. The hovertruck was big though and had more than enough room to hold all the people they’d lead down here. It almost looked like a double-decker bus with helicopter legs and small, round, jet engines on the bottom, back, and front. There were retractable ladders on either side of the bottom level to get up into it. The top level was a little smaller than the bottom with a cockpit at the front with a football shaped glass dome. On top of the upper level was a mounted machinegun in its own 360 degrees swiveling glass dome. The bottom layer, like a bus, had little square windows evenly placed along its length and in between the helicopter-like landing gear was another mounted gun inverted, but identical to the one on top.
There was only one guy down in the dark with the hovertruck. He was dressed more like a mechanic than a pilot. He was in faded gray coveralls covered in vehicle fluid stains. He looked like he did most of his own work. He had big calloused mechanic's hands. His graying black hair and the heavy bags under his eyes made him look older than he probably really was. He had kind gray-blue eyes and half a stubbly beard that looked more like the result of neglect than an intent. He was wiping some engine grease off his hands with a ripped up piece of a shirt.
“Are you the pilot?” Nate asked.
“That's right. Call me Ford,” the pilot said offering a hand. “Radcliff radioed ahead. She's almost good to go. Just need to do some pre-flight checks. I lost my copilot though so it'll take me a minute.”
“Hey, I can be your copilot,” Nate offered, “I haven’t done anything official, but I've gone through some of the flight simulators over at Logan.”
“I can work with that. Lots better than not having one,” Ford replied, “Can you at least do a pre-flight check?”
“I think I can manage that,” Nate replied.
“Good. That's all I need right now. Get on up there. I'll be up in a sec.”
Nate jogged up into the hovertruck and climbed one of the ladders into the bottom level. He had to climb up through the lower level to get into the cockpit.
“Alright everybody,” Ford said. “Get on up those ladders. We've got some pretty banged up people coming in after you so let's get out of their way as fast as we can alright?”
The crowd at Lumar's back murmured their acknowledgment and started up the ladders.
“Can I help?” Lumar asked Ford as the others moved away.
“I have a feeling Radcliff's going to need some help getting those injured people up those ladders. This old girl wasn't designed for that kind of clientele, but we'll make do. I'd just wait a bit.”
Lumar nodded. It wasn't long before Radcliff showed up with Jesse, Wallace, and half a dozen others limping along behind them. There was also a small contingent of other soldiers with them. One of them was carrying a huge tripod and another had a machinegun almost as big as he was slung over his shoulder. The injured were an amalgam of crutches and bandages. Radcliff was carrying a woman in his arms that had lost both of her legs. Jesse and Wallace had a man in the same state on a stretcher between them. The rest were able to hobble along on their own. The soldiers started setting up the machinegun in the doorway as soon as the last of the wounded was through.
“Is the ship ready?” Radcliff asked.
“That Latino kid's up there going through the pre-flight,” Ford reported. “We just thought you might need a hand with this crowd.”
“Read my mind,” Radcliff replied. “I can carry this one up the ladder no problem, but the others will need some help.”
Radcliff started up the ladder, cradling the woman in one arm like a baby. It didn't look it took him any effort at all. Once she was up, Radcliff stood at the top of the ladder and helped Jesse and Wallace hoist their charge up. He pulled the man and the stretcher up easily once it was above their heads. Wallace and Jesse climbed part way up the ladder. They hung off the sides and offered a hand down to the injured. Wallace climbed three rungs higher than Jesse and Lumar ended up at the bottom pushing people up into first Jesse's reach and then Wallace's. It took about fifteen minutes to get everyone aboard. When the last of them was safely inside, Lumar climbed up into the lower level's cab. Radcliff was still hanging out of the door at the top of the ladder. Radcliff offered his hand and lifted Lumar into the hovertruck with one arm. Lumar couldn't believe that Radcliff was strong enough to be able to lift him effortlessly like that.
“As soon as we open the door they're coming in!” Radcliff shouted down to the gun crew by the door. “We'll do what we can with our guns, but the rest is up to you! Don't let a single one of them past you!”
Lumar stepped into the cab of the hovertruck. It even looked like a bus on the inside. There were pairs of seats on either side of the central aisle. Unlike seats on most buses though, these had seatbelts. The windows didn't open, but had retractable blinds in between two panes of glass to shut out the light. Towards the front of the seating area, was another ladder leading up into the top level where the cockpit was. There was another ladder that went down in the middle of the aisle that lead down into the seat for the mounted gun at the base of the ship. Jesse had already dropped down into the gunner seat. Lumar couldn't see any of the others. They were all up in the cockpit.
“Go ahead and take a seat,” Radcliff ordered Lumar as he made his way for the cockpit. “Make sure everyone's got their seatbelts on and then strap in. This ain't going to be a smooth flight.”
Lumar made a quick round of the injured people to make sure they were all secured before throwing himself down into a window seat on the left side of the hovertruck. Someone had closed the blinds the last time this seat had been used. Lumar opened the blinds so he could see outside.
The craft shook and slowly started to rise. Once it was off the ground, it lifted up into the air as smoothly as an elevator. Lumar felt the elevation change in his stomach and his ears popped once as they climbed. The darkness cracked as the huge metal doors pulled apart overhead. There were Sarsaul falling down through the crack in ceiling. The ground had opened up under their feet. The first several plummeted through the air with arms and legs flailing. Lumar saw flashes of light coming from above and below. Jesse squealed her delight as she caught one of the falling hornets with her machinegun. It didn't seem like Jesse or the gunner on top was bothering with the wingless ants. Lumar saw dozens of them drop like bricks through the opening. He leaned as high up on the window as he co
uld and saw one splatter into a mess of gray and orange bits on the floor below.
Lumar heard the pounding through the ceiling as other aliens landed on top of the hovertruck. The gunfire never stopped, but Lumar couldn't tell where the guns were turned. All he could see was their occasional handiwork. The pounding on the roof didn't stop. Lumar couldn't tell if more were landing on them or if what he heard were footfalls on the roof. The craft leaned hard left and Lumar saw an ant tumble by. The tilt of the ship gave him a full view of the ant's fall all the way to the bottom.
They were starting to get pretty far off the ground. Lumar's eyes shifted back up. It took only a moment for the door to be fully opened and the hornets to start gliding down through the opening on their veiny transparent wings. Both gunners did all they could to keep the Sarsaul from making it to the ground alive, but there were too many. Lumar could barely make out the sound of the gun on the ground over the hovertruck’s. As long as he could hear it though he knew they were keeping them out of the rest of the bunker.
The doors started closing again before they reached the ground level. They had to, Lumar realized. From Lumar's view he could see how close they were cutting it. The edge of the metal plate that formed the door was five feet thick and as the bottom of Lumar's window passed it, it couldn't have been more than five feet away from the glass. For a second he was afraid the landing gear would get caught in the jaws of the hangar, but they didn't.
The craft kept climbing as Sarsaul threw themselves at the sides of the craft. A hornet's face crashed into the glass in front of Lumar. He fell over into the empty seat beside him with his hands covering his face. It didn't break through. Lumar looked around embarrassed that he'd flinched like that, but no one's eyes were on him. They were all climbing over each other to stare out the windows. There were others laying back in their seats not unlike the way he was. Lumar sat back up and looked out his window again.
They kept climbing higher and higher without moving an inch forward or back. Lumar saw Sarsaul leap up at the craft as it rose. Some of them must have gotten almost twenty feet off the ground, but in moments the hovertruck was out of reach. Jesse in the gunner seat below never stopped firing at the Sarsaul standing on the ground staring up at them, even after they were no longer a threat.
They were on the other side of the wall from the bunker. Lumar watched as the top of the wall sunk below his field of vision. Everything looked like it was moving. The ground was alive with hornets and ants swarming all around the bunker. They were surrounded on all sides. There were hundreds of aliens climbing all over the walls. Only one of the towers was still firing.
Beyond the bunker, every other structure was on fire. Smoke billowed out of every window and every doorway. The shimmer of distant heat made the buildings sway to a slow somber dance. Despite the heat and smoke, there were still aliens crawling all over the buildings looking for those survivors. Lumar had to finally admit to himself that there were going to be no survivors other than the people around him on this ship.
They must have been at least a hundred feet up before they started moving forward. When their ascent stopped they hung in the air for a moment. The back engines came to life with a dull roar. It felt like they were crawling forward through the air at first, but Lumar was glad that they were turning his window away from his burning home. He couldn't decide if he wanted to scream or cry. There was enough crying around him. Almost all of the other passengers were weeping into their hands or staring blankly out the windows with unbelieving eyes. Lumar's uniform gave him the strength to keep himself composed. He felt like he needed to look strong for the others. He was the only one wearing a uniform of any kind in the cab. The rest of the passengers were wearing hastily thrown on clothing, mostly pajamas. He choked back his tears, bit his tongue, and kept his face on the window.
It took the hovertruck a while to get to its cruising speed. It gave Lumar more time than he wanted to stare out at the Sarsaul surrounding the city. Lumar saw several other alien forms from the air. There were two huge spiders lumbering around the walls with what almost looked tanks mounted on their backs. They must have easily stood sixty feet tall, dwarfing the other Sarsaul.
The giants paid no heed to the aircraft rising up from the ground, but there were other Sarsaul darting through the air. They looked like huge dragonflies soaring like fighter planes. They were buzzing through the air around the city until the hovertruck rose from the ground. Lumar watched as all of these flying aliens turned towards them. The Sarsaul weren't just going to let them fly away.
Like all the other Sarsaul, the dragonflies were covered in teeth and claws. The length of their snake-like bodies was covered in tiny arms with hooked claws at the ends. The ends of their tails were like scorpions' with a spine as long as an arm. Their eyes were half of their head. The rest was a jaw with rows of teeth like a shark.
The machineguns burning from the top and bottom of the hovertruck kept the dragonflies from getting to close to the ship as they started flying away. The dragonflies flew faster than the hovertruck. They swarmed around, above, and below them. Lumar heard something hammering against the side of the ship. Behind him one of the windows blew open. The air rushed out as the cabin pressure dropped. The occupant of the seat had been leaning up against the glass watching the dragonflies circle them. Now he was lying in the aisle with a jagged, sword-length barb running through his jaw to the back of his head. He died before he hit the floor. Everyone started screaming and throwing themselves out of their seats to the ground, holding on to anything they could.
The windows sealed off with metal shutters to keep the pressure in. Lumar got one last glimpse at a dragonfly firing the spine from the end of its tail. Every muscle in its body tensed up until it curved like a 'C'. The end of its tail swelled up for a fraction of a second. The pressure released the projectile. It almost looked to Lumar like they were forcing a shit, propelling the projectiles with a contraction of their anuses. As soon as one spine was loosed another was forced down through the body to take its place.
Lumar didn't see anything else after that. He felt the crash of the spines against the hull of the hovertruck for a few more minutes before they died away. A few moments after that the machineguns stopped roaring. The only sound in the hovertruck was the whimpering of her passengers.
Chapter Five
Without a window to stare out, Lumar couldn't tell what direction they were flying or how far they'd gone. All he knew was that he was getting tired of being surrounded by the crying and whimpering of his fellow passengers. He'd already decided he wasn't going to mourn with them. At first he was just trying to put on a strong face, but then he started getting irritated with the other passengers. There was one man listing off everything he'd owned, a new television set, a car, and apparently he'd just done some renovations to his home. He'd lost a dog too. Lumar could at least sympathize with that part, but the rest just made him angry. He felt guilty for being angry. He had no right. He should have been right there with him. He'd lost all of his possessions too, but he couldn't find it in himself to complain about it. People had lost families after all, children, husbands and wives. No things could compare to that.
Jesse emerged from the gunner seat below. She'd pulled her ponytail out. Her hair was down just past her chin in a gentle wave of brown. It was wet with sweat. She brushed it back over her ears and looked around the cabin at the other passengers for a few moments. They all stared at her expectantly. Her eyes surveyed the lot of them, but eventually landed on Lumar.
“Wanna see what the others are up to?” she asked him. It was almost like she'd read his mind. He really wanted an excuse to get away from the other passengers.
“Yeah, that sounds good,” Lumar replied.
“Well come on then,” Jesse said.
They made their way up the ladder at the front of the cabin. Jesse leaped halfway up the ladder and shot up the rest of the way in about two seconds. She had a lot more energy than Lumar did. Looking at the
ladder made Lumar realize how tired he was. The armor started to feel much heavier as he contemplated the climb. He took a deep breath and slowly made his way up. It wasn't as hard as he'd feared it would be, but he felt the muscles in his arms aching after he got up.
“I hate flying blind,” the pilot, Ford complained.
They'd sealed up all the windows on the upper level too. The upper level was much smaller than the cabin below. They were an oval of eight seats facing in around the ladder. Radcliff was sitting on the left side. Wallace was on the right with Jesse sitting as close to him as their armored bodies would allow. There were two more seats at the bow of the ship facing the front for the pilot and co-pilot. Ford was on the left; Nate was beside him on the right. The ceiling was domed overhead. The ladder continued up from the lower level to the other gunner seat up top.
Nate turned around in his seat when Lumar came up. Lumar thought he was going to say something, but he just stared at him. Lumar wished the others weren't around. He just wanted to talk, but neither he or Nate were the sort to have the kind of conversation they needed with others around. Instead Nate just turned back to his instruments.
“At least the navigation systems are working,” Nate said to Ford.
“Nobody becomes a pilot to stare at dials,” Ford replied.
Lumar was still standing at the top of the ladder. Jesse and Wallace looked like they were pretty cozy on their side and Radcliff's face was locked into a deep scowl cradled in his massive hands. It wasn't hard to see how happy Jesse and Wallace were. Radcliff's look wasn't what Lumar expected though. He imagined anger would be on the man's face or maybe sorrow, but all Lumar could see was guilt on his face. Maybe it was the fact that he was staring distantly at the floor or that the scowl on his face lacked heat. When Lumar looked at him the emotion he read was guilt though he wasn't sure how he knew that. It made sense. A lot of men had died under Radcliff's command today.
When Darkness Reigns Page 7
