The Fire Supervisor grinned. Yes, with a name and the demeanor like his, Stalin would not be hard to find.
Stalin saluted the fireman, then quickly scrambled onto the deuce and a half. He was pleasantly surprised when he saw the driver and co-driver were both young women, two very attractive brunettes. The driver was a Sergeant, the co-driver a Private First Class. He grinned.
“Comrades. Thank you for bringing me my equipment. Tell me, do you have time while I find lodging, and a place to store my equipment? Or do I need to drive the truck myself?”
The Sergeant smiled. This Russian looked like he could take a bear down. Yet there was something about his demeanor, despite his scars, that was oddly attractive. He had no rank, so he must be a civilian.
“Well, Sir, today is Thanksgiving, and we are on a skeleton crew. We were called out because they thought your plane would be spread out all over the tarmac, and we would be picking up pieces of the cargo for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Hm. So you were called out on your holiday. I understand this was the first one of this type to be celebrated since the Squids appeared, da?”
“Yes,” the Private answered. “We have a turkey dinner supposedly waiting for us at the chow hall. But I don’t know how long they’ll hold some for us.”
Stalin smiled a bit. “Take me to a hotel that has rooms for my men and I, and a place to park this truck under guard. I will then treat you to any meal you wish. I am very good at obtaining meals for my men. It is what you Americans call scrounging.”
The Sergeant grinned. Why not, she thought. “Okay, Sir. As long as you call our dispatch, and tell them that you need our assistance for the next twenty-four hours. I know they don’t want to interfere with anyone else’s Thanksgiving.”
“Then it is a deal. Shake, in your parlance. I will also need to know your names in order to inform your dispatch.”
“Sergeant Stephanie Seymour, and this is Private First Class Kristen Smith, at your service, Sir.”
“Please. No sirs. I am not an officer. Senior Instructor, or just plain Stalin is fine.”
PFC Smith looked at him quizzically. “Stalin?”
“Yes. That is my name. I have no others, even though the Customs Officer did not believe me. I know who I am.”
Sgt. Seymour smiled. “Well, crawl into the cab, Stalin. It’s cold out. I think I know of a hotel that will fit your needs.”
Early the next morning, Stalin woke up on the comfortable hotel bed. Both women were next to him, one on each side. Sgt. Seymour had kept her promise and found a hotel with a large enough parking garage to accommodate the truck. Stalin had arranged for shifts of two men each to secure the weapons and other equipment during the night. A call to a prearranged telephone number and Stalin had set up a time to meet in forty eight hours with other trucks that were being convoyed down the Alaskan (ALKAN) Highway, across Canada, and down to Montana. The deuce and a half was theirs to use now, and the two women soldiers would get a ride back to the Base. But before that, Stalin kept his promise.
Some palms greased with actual gold and silver, and the hotel management came up with turkey dinners with all the fixings. Stalin then made his way into the kitchen, and somehow managed to concoct borscht as well as some potato dishes. And, of course, a large quantity of vodka was located. Sergeant ‘call me Stephanie’ Seymour sat next to Stalin with a very satisfied look on her face after having stuffed herself with his culinary offerings.
“I know this is better than anything we could have at the chow hall. Neither I nor Kristen have any family left, so this was definitely a good way to restart Thanksgiving for us. How can we repay you?”
Stalin poured the Sergeant another glass of vodka. “Oh, I will think of something…”
Stalin knew he had a certain animal attractiveness that had a strong effect on women, despite all of his scars. In fact, with some women, it was because of the scars. Women, especially in this day and age, wanted a strong man that could help protect them and give them strong, healthy babies. The arrival of the Squids put a premium on fighting qualities to keep babies from being harvested.
Kristen, the PFC, stirred on his left side. This would be a night to remember. Stalin smoothly extracted himself from in between the two women, and headed to the shower. Nothing like American plumbing and hot water. He then dressed and repacked the few things he had taken out. The two women were just beginning to wake now, and saw him getting ready to leave.
“Alas, my sweets, I must see to my men. Please stay in this room as long as you like. I have paid for another night, but will be busy all day. Early tomorrow morning, we start the long drive to Malmstrom Allied Base.”
Stephanie stood up, nude, and walked over to kiss him. “Any time you pass through, please look us up. I can’t thank you enough for a great Thanksgiving.”
Stalin gave a small smile. “I will remember that, Comrade Stephanie. This was my first exposure to your American Thanksgiving. I will look forward to experiencing other Yankee holidays if they are all like this one.” Kristen then approached and kissed him goodbye as well. He hugged them both one last time, and then left.
Stephanie looked at Kristen. She smiled, and hugged her friend and fellow soldier. They had covered each other’s backsides for the past two years. In a way they were the only family they had left. Like siblings, they were willing to share most things for the sake of their small bonded unit.
“Well duty calls. Come on, Private First Class Smith. Time to get showered, dressed, and have some leftover turkey for breakfast. Then back to the J-BER. We still need to earn our pay.”
CHAPTER 20
“There are no Holidays in hell.”
-Anonymous
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
CATTLE COUNTRY
Malcolm Carver watched as the top of the downtown office building burned. A half hour prior, as the Unoccupied States celebrated Thanksgiving, a twin engine aircraft later identified as the B-25 left behind by Torbin Bender and company in Florida had dropped two twenty gallon drums on the center of Atlanta. One hit the top of the tall structure and exploded, throwing its cargo of homemade napalm all over the roof. The second drum fell to the street below, where it broke apart but did not explode. The liquid contents ran down into the sewers and nearby basements and parking garages, spreading fumes and flammable liquid. Fortunately, nothing had been set on fire. As they evacuated the residents from the underground warrens, they lost one man who had been overcome from the fumes in the confined spaces. But they had been lucky. If both bombs had exploded at ground level, the flaming substances would have resulted in a high number of casualties among those hiding underground.
At last count, there were just over fifty thousand surviving people of color hiding in Atlanta. Now, minus one more.
He glanced sideway at his “new best friend”, as he jokingly referred to him. Dawoud Amin had dropped from the sky, literally, a week before. Coming in a sailplane glider that had been launched covertly just outside of Cattle Country, Dawoud had used a catapult assist as well as two small rocket motors to propel the glider up to some five thousand feet. Dawoud had expertly ridden the air currents to make a silent landing in downtown Atlanta. A trained Islamic terrorist, member of a sleeper cell in the U.S., he was the only surviving member of his group. Now he used his skills against the aliens who were killing his darker skinned brothers around the world. For some six years he had hidden his dark skin from the harvesters, until one day arriving at Malmstrom Armed Forces Base, where he offered his skills to his former enemy.
“How did you give up your mission to serve Allah and kill the infidel?” Malcolm had asked.
The tall, slender Dawoud had given a cynical laugh. “Allah has apparently given up on us. He allowed these beasts to show up and begin eating us. It must be a form of punishment. He has turned his back on us until we prove our worthiness again by killing this new enemy in His name. The eating of human flesh by intelligent beings is an abomination. If we stop this, Allah
may return to us.”
“You said ‘may’.”
Dawoud shrugged. “If it is the will of Allah. No man may know all of Allah’s desires. We try to follow his word—the Qur’an. But we apparently failed and now must redeem ourselves. Only Allah may make that decision.”
Dawoud had brought a few goodies with him. “Pappy” Gun had sent some early production examples of an ‘ace in the hole’ he was developing—3D Printer produced weapons. Two single shot, bolt action .223 caliber rifles made from spun plastic/ceramic medium had proven quite accurate, and were now referred to as poor man’s sniper rifles. Though only good for about a dozen shots until they began to show pressure cracks, they were still very accurate for the first few rounds. Dawoud had already taken out two sentries on the outskirts of the ring of armed personnel the Tschaaa and their lapdog Krakens had thrown up. Dawoud had brought a small spark radio set that he used to tap the out old morse code to a relay listening post hidden in Tennessee. He used this to communicate the success of the weapons so that more could be provided.
In addition, Dawoud had brought two small .32 caliber pistols with matched silencers, also 3D Printer weapons. Six rounds in an integral magazine, the pistols might last for twelve shots on a good day before breaking. In a shoulder holster, Dawoud had a 3D printer copy of a Czech Skorpion machine pistol in .32 caliber. It would last for at least the twenty round magazine it came with, maybe a second mag if you were lucky. But all of these weapons were fairly light, cheap, quickly made, and disposable. Perfect for behind the lines operations, and Atlanta was definitely behind the lines.
Dawoud had also brought a small quantity of plastic explosives, plus an encyclopedic knowledge of improvised weapons, explosives, and booby traps. The fact that the Unoccupied States had sent him to Malcolm out of the clear blue sky, after the F-51 air attack, was a good harbinger of things to come. Then, Dawoud had met with Professor Bashir Gupta and it was a match made in heaven. Or hell, depending how you looked at it.
Gupta had looked at Dawoud in respectful surprise when he began outlining all the improvised explosives he could manufacture with the chemicals and materials at hand. “Are you certain that you do not have a Doctorate in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering?”
Dawoud snorted. “The only Doctorate I have is from the school of hard knocks and street warfare. I was taught by the best on how to make weapons out of almost anything.”
“You used them against Hindus as well as Christians, yes?”
Dawoud hesitated before he answered. “Yes. I was a warrior for Allah in every sense of the word. I will not apologize for who I was. It was the result of the times I lived in. Now, times have changed.”
Gupta smiled. “Yes, times have changed. I think God, Allah, Shiva—whomever you pray to—has decided to teach us a valuable lesson.”
“What is that?” It was Dawoud’s turn to inquire.
“There are worse things in the universe than the fact someone worships a God in a different way than you do. One of those worse things is that there are beings in the universe that find us quite tasty.” Dawoud had laughed long and hard at Gupta’s response.
Now, Malcolm and Dawoud were watching as two battle robs led a patrol of Kraken human soldiers into what was downtown Atlanta. The burning office building provided a little extra warmth on this cold morning. The enemy forces made their way slowly down the thoroughfare, weapons ready. They scanned the buildings for snipers and other threats, having been on the receiving end of both the past weeks. Now, it appeared as if the Krakens were beginning to put more pressure on the holdouts in Atlanta, no longer content to just starve them out. However, they still seemed hesitant to just raze Atlanta to the ground for some reason. Malcolm suspected he would never entirely understand alien psychology.
Dawoud watched the approaching Krakens with an almost feral glee. As the battle robs reached the center of the street, he told Malcolm, “Watch this.” He pushed a button on the command detonator he had made from a cell phone. Just as a wheeled battle rob drove by an abandoned car, a shaped charge detonated, shooting a jet of molten metal into the side of the bulb-shaped turret. The Tschaaa built machine began to smoke and spark, then jerked to a halt. The humans scattered to what cover they could find, a few shots fired at the origin of the blast. Dawoud and Malcolm, some one hundred yards away and well concealed, both smiled as they watched the action. The Krakens yelled back and forth for about ten minutes, the remaining battle rob searching for a target. Made from a harvester bob, it keyed on motion. If one stood still, it would often miss human shapes.
Finally, the patrol reformed, Malcolm hearing yells of “booby-trap” being thrown about. They slowly moved about twenty yards closer until a battle rob fell into the large tiger trap in the street. The street surface had been replaced with a tarp, stained and painted to make it appear as if it were the original street pavement. Stretched super taunt, it held up until the machine was almost completely suspended. Then it gave way, the battle rob falling into the sewer drain below. The Krakens yelled as it fell, scrambled to the edge of the pit trap and looked down in. The Squad Commander yelled commands to find some rope, cable, anything to be used to lift and pull the battle rob out. Dawoud looked at Malcolm and nodded. Malcolm clicked a small hand held radio he had three times.
From a concealed catapult a block over, a large gasoline filled tripled garbage bag was launched. The large bag arced high in the air over a parking lot connecting the two streets. None of the Krakens saw it until it was too late. The bag hit, burst. A small detonator Dawoud had made sparked, and flaming liquid was all over. Two Krakens were inundated, turning into running fiery torches. One, a female, fell into the pit with the battle rob, screaming. The other flaming Kraken tried to fall and roll like children were taught in grade school. He ended up rolling into the pit too, screaming as he fell. Suddenly, everyone broke and ran, firing wildly. One Kraken ran down along the remaining storefronts close to the buildings. In his mad dash, he tripped a deadfall trap. A trash can full of watered down but still potent battery acid cascaded over him. Screaming in pain, he dropped his assault rifle, and began to run blindly about. His fellow Krakens tried to yell directions to the blinded soldier but he was screaming in pain, clawing at his eyes. Running and stumbling in ever widening circles, he soon joined his two fiery comrades in the trap pit. There was a thud as he hit the surface below, and his screaming stopped.
“Quickly, Malcolm. Have the men get into the pit to recover the weapons. They may send more battle robs.” A short broadcast, and pre-placed forces were in the pit with fire extinguishers. Two others ran to the battle rob up on the street. With practiced ease, they broke open the maintenance hatch in the back of the turret, and removed the machine gun and ammunition. Luckily, the shaped charge blast had entered underneath the weapon box in which the machine gun had been built. The controls had been fried, the electronic-organic hybrid brain knocked out, but the weapon was still serviceable.
Twenty minutes later, the area around the ambush scene was deserted. Malcolm and Dawoud made it back to the hidden underground command post Malcolm had established in a large storage room connected to sub-floor of a parking garage. Three stories down, he felt safe from bombing attacks. They soon had the results of the ambush. Three usable assault rifles, although one would need a replacement stock. Surprisingly, both of battle rob machine guns were workable, as were two rifle grenades that had been recovered from the one shot launchers placed in the front of the ex-harvesters. It was a good haul.
Malcolm grinned at Dawoud. “You bring us luck, my friend. Guns and dead Krakens. The only thing that could make it better would be a Thanksgiving turkey.”
Dawoud chuckled. “No one mentioned anything about me bringing a turkey when I flew the glider here.”
From a desk chair in the command post, Red spoke. “I could come up with some roasted rat right now. There are also rumors that a cat was caught and skinned a block over.” The gorgeous young woman looked at Dawoud with what Malcol
m could only describe as a smoldering gaze. Dawoud seemed to attract her as no other man, not even Malcolm, could. He smiled to himself. Love and lust found themselves in the oddest places.
“Whatever you could provide, my good lady, would be most welcome,” Dawoud said, giving a short bow. This elicited a grin from Red, who then hurried to find them something to eat. Malcolm chuckled.
“You know she has the hots for you, Dawoud.”
“Yes, my friend. She is very attractive.”
“So…”
Dawoud looked at Malcolm. “I am still enough of a good Muslim that I would have to take her as a wife before I would have sexual congress with her. She would be my third wife.”
Malcolm looked surprised. “You have two more in the Unoccupied States?”
“Yes. They helped me get to Malmstrom, to offer my services. We have four children.”
Malcolm laughed. “You are a man full of surprises.”
Dawoud smiled. “But first I would have to explain to Red that she would be the most junior wife. She would have to convert to Islam, if Allah and I can reach a reconciliation.” He paused.
“She would have to hold her own against two other wives. I have already had to break up some catfights they had.”
Malcolm laughed loudly. “Before she gets back, let me tell you about how I first saw Red….”
Chapter 21
MALMSTROM JOINT ARMED SERVICES
GREAT FALLS, MONTANA
3:00am Christmas morning and Aleks could not sleep. She sat at the kitchen table of the duplex, sipping some tea she had made. The trolls, her twin sons, were active in her womb. They were moving, shifting around restlessly, as if preparing for something to happen. Aleks knew it was a proverbial crap shoot concerning the due date, the Tschaaa attempts at human fecundity modifications having sped up the gestation period.
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