by Jordan Ervin
Lukas glanced around the room and watched as the others shouted and cried out.
“Is everyone okay?” Kane shouted, though his voice sounded somewhat hollow and distant.
Lukas glanced down at the glowing circles that had been in his eyes moments ago. They were bright white—increasing in intensity as the seconds passed. After a few moments, they winked out with a flash.
“What the hell was that?” Lukas demanded.
“They must have hacked our nVision,” Jamie said wearily as she rubbed her red eyes.
“I thought we had instilled preventative measures to—”
“We had!” Warren replied as he leapt into action with a small team of engineers, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. “They shouldn’t have been able to hack it again.”
“Well they did!” Lukas roared. “Do we still have eyes on the battle?”
“No, sir,” Clark Madison replied. “The battle map is down.”
“Is there any other way to access the video feeds?”
“Not yet,” Clark said, guiding his hands over his computer station quickly. “Until the terminals are booted and I’ve rerouted our satellite feed to our local computer, we’re blind in the skies.”
“Do whatever you can to get the picture back up now!” Lukas shouted angrily.
“Yes, sir!” Clark said quickly before turning to his computer and drumming the keys like a madman, shouting for someone to ready the large screen at the front of the room.
“What else did they touch?”
“No idea,” Kane said as he glanced at DeWitt’s computer screen. “All other systems are still functional. We just can’t see what’s going on.”
“Can we still command them?” Damian asked.
“Yes,” Battle Marshal Scott said, rubbing his eyes. “But we won’t be able to see the Patriarch’s commands or them carrying out their orders.”
“Sir!” Battle Marshal Madison shouted as the big screen at the front of the room lit up with a satellite view of Montgomery. “They’ve deployed their reserve fighters and are about to engage our Yellow Jackets above Montgomery!”
“No, no, no!” Kane roared.
“Eli, what do we do?” Lukas beckoned, reaching out to grab Eli by the shoulders. The Battle Lord stood there quietly, staring back at Lukas blankly, his mouth twitching though nothing was coming out. Lukas took a deep breath, fighting back the image of Sigmund’s demon lunging for him.
I am the Sovereign, Lukas thought, taking a deep breath. One man’s failures will not destroy my empire!
“Damian—relieve the Battle Lord from command!” Lukas roared. “Win me this battle!”
“Yes, my Sovereign,” Damian said, turning to those who rushed about to restore order. “Get those Pulsars auto targeting anything above one hundred feet elevation and deploy the reserve MIGs to engage Sigmund’s fighters. Automate every Yellow Jacket to move low and fast. Assault the column of tanks and cut them off at the mouth of the bridge. I don’t care if we lose every single drone we have. We must stop Sigmund and destroy that bridge!”
“Listen up!” Victor bellowed as the cry of the Patriarch’s jets passed overhead, missiles streaking down into the city toward the Yellow Jackets. “General Mahiri says the Imperium is flying blind for a few minutes. They’ve bought us some time to secure that bridge. What’s the status on new recruits near the bridge?”
“Not good,” Sergeant Hardy answered. “They’re all unarmed civilians and refugees. We lost quite a few after the initial awakening, but we’ve got upwards of one thousand new Recruits within a mile of the bridge. They’re obeying the loud speakers well enough, but they’re confused and have nothing to attack with other than their hands and a few guns.”
“Can we arm them?”
“I don’t know,” Mark replied. “A few Yellow Jackets have cut us off. If we can push through, then maybe.”
“And what of the bridge?”
“It’s still standing,” Will said as he raised his tablet and pulled up the video feed of a drone overhead. “They took out a good chunk but we can still use the unaffected lanes if we can seize it.”
Victor took the tablet and guided the drone closer to the bridge. The last few hundred surviving refugees were running across the broken pavement to the north side of the river. Concrete rubble was scattered about the bridge. A few smoldering cars, an overturned red SUV, and a large semi-truck with smoke billowing from the engine compartment sat motionless on the ground. Victor zoomed in on the semi-truck as a man dragged people from the red SUV that had come to a stop just next to it. He tried to read the side of the long, polished trailer, but the smoke from the cab obscured the image. The smoke cleared for a moment, revealing a red triangle on the back. It almost looked as though….
“We’ve got to move!” Victor roared. “There’s a fuel truck on the bridge waiting to blow. If that thing goes, then so does our bridge. Hardy!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Do we have anymore IRDs available to hit those on the bridge?”
“No sir,” Will replied. “Their ammo was exhausted turning those in the city.”
“Then update the message on the loud speaker for those new Recruits we have turned,” Victor said. “Order everyone to run for the bridge and extinguish the fire on that truck by any means necessary.”
“Sir, the Yellow Jackets might block them off before we get there,” Will replied. “They’ll be slaughtered.”
“Some will make it through if we really have one thousand within a mile,” Victor replied. “And we’ll be there with our tanks in five minutes to support them. Order them to kill anyone who gets in their way. As for us, get ready to move. We’re moving in and hitting those Yellow Jackets at the mouth of the bridge. Now let’s move!”
Rick shook his head as he slowly woke back to reality. He could hear his ragged breathing as his granddaughters wailed in the background. He glanced to his left and watched as Eric pulled Sarah from the vehicle. Judah was outside—blood on his forehead and his rifle raised, pointing back toward the mouth of the bridge. Fear masked the boy’s face as he glanced frantically toward the front of the semi-truck next to them. Rick coughed as a shift in the wind briefly filled the cab with dark smoke before returning back to clean, if somewhat stale, air. If that breeze shifted again and lingered, it could suffocate him and his wife. He had to get her out of there fast. He glanced over at his wife and cleared his throat, ready to shout.
And then he saw her.
She looked so peaceful, even as the dark blood streamed down the side of her face. She displayed no pain, no emotion, nothing but the blank stare forward as her eyes glazed over, staring at nothing.
“Judi,” Rick whispered softly, shaking her lightly. Another wave of smoke entered the cab of the truck. He coughed again, tears forming in his eyes, though he could clearly see his wife’s open gaze didn’t flinch. “Judi….”
Hands grabbed him from behind and tugged at him, but he shrugged them off quickly as he began to yell.
“Oh, God!” Rick shouted, his sanity finally gone. “No! Please God, no!”
“Rick!” Sarah’s voice shouted from the street. “Grab her and—”
“She’s dead!” Rick bellowed as a deluge of tears burst forth. “Oh God, she’s dead!”
He was vaguely aware of Sarah screaming behind him as Eric tugged at him again. He tried to fight the man off, cursing as Eric pulled Rick free of the wreckage. As soon as he pulled Rick free, he dove back into the upside down truck and began freeing Judi. He pulled her out and gently set her on the ground, checking for a pulse. Eric brushed Judi’s hair back and grimaced as he revealed a massive gash on the side of her head.
Rick’s wife, the love of his life, was gone.
Rick sunk to the ground next to her and sobbed. He was distantly aware of the new thundering explosions behind them—a surreal moment of sorrow and fury. He sat there and wept as he held his dead wife in his arms. She had a slight smile to her eyes, almost as though t
he beginning of what came after life had been enough to make her beam. Rick wiped away his tears, taking one more look at her eyes before closing them.
“Rick, I’m sorry, but we’ve got to go,” Eric said. Jets screamed overhead from the west. Rick glanced up and watched them pass, attacking an approaching cloud of massive house-sized drones. More explosions boomed from the mouth of the bridge, some five hundred feet away. He looked back and watched as dozens of massive drones exploded, the occasional anti-air missile passing overhead. Even as the drones began to fall to the ground, he could see the large tanks behind them nearing the bridge. Rick glanced back down at his wife—his beautiful, broken, lifeless wife—and forgot about the war that had consumed everything he loved.
“Rick, we’ve got to go now!” Eric shouted.
“I’m not going,” Rick replied calmly.
“This is no time—”
“Go.” Rick gently set Judi down and rose. He winced as a spout of pain shot out from his ribs; he had certainly broken at least one, but he didn’t care.
For him, it was all about to be over.
Rick approached Eric, placed his hand on the man’s shoulder, and looked him in the eye. “You were right. I once took an oath to defend this country. An oath to live by…and an oath to die by. If they cross this bridge, then we’re all dead.” Rick reached out and grabbed a backpack from Eric’s hand—hefting the bag that contained a few pistols, an automatic shotgun with low recoil, and a long machete. “You take care of them, you hear? I don’t care what battle you get caught up in. They’re your fight now.” He hesitated before grabbing one of the grenades off of Eric’s vest. He smiled and turned to Sarah. “He’s a good man, Sarah. You take care of him, too.”
“Rick, no,” Sarah muttered as Rick fought back the tears. Another series of booms sounded off from the mouth of the bridge and Eric grabbed Sarah by the arm, shouting for her to run. “Rick, don’t. Eric, let me go!” She tried to shake Eric’s grip, but he picked her up by the waist and began to run. “Rick, please! No! You can’t….”
Rick turned away, rounding the back of the fuel container—his teary eyes darting to the force at the mouth of the bridge. The massive drones that had been blocking the mouth of the bridge were all destroyed now and a horde of people had started to cross. The fuel truck next to him sat jackknifed, blocking off the entirety of the remaining northbound lanes. Rick turned back, Sarah’s screams for him disappearing, though he couldn’t tell if she had stopped screaming or if they had been buried beneath the rumble of his approaching death.
He knelt down next to Judi, grabbing her under the arms and sliding her against the rear wheels of the semi’s fuel container. He set the bag down next to her and brushed her hair away from her face.
“Baby,” Rick whispered with a smile, “I’ll be right there.”
He then rose, slowly made his way to the fuel nozzle on the semi-truck’s container, and began to twist it off.
“I, Rick Reinhart, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic….”
He could hear the bellowing mass of crazed people, no more than six hundred feet away. When the cap was nearly off, a steady stream of fuel began to splash down onto the concrete, covering his shoes and pooling the roadway.
“I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion….”
He walked over to the bag and drew the pistols quickly, loading each and placing them on top of the back wheel well next to the stream of gasoline. He then buckled the machete to his waist and lifted the shotgun before him. He loaded the automatic scattergun with a twenty-five round magazine and glanced back to where the last of his family ran. They were now tiny dots at the end of the bridge.
“I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office for which I have served.”
As the throng of hostile people neared the truck from the other side, he pulled the pin to the grenade—careful to keep the lever compressed—and held it with his left hand.
When he fell, so would it.
Rick took a deep breath as the first man rounded the truck, a man armed with nothing but fear and a terrified howl. As the man lunged forward, Rick raised his weapon—aiming from the hip as he muttered his final words.
“So help me God.”
And as Richard Reinhart, a man of the old breed, made his final stand against the world that had changed without him, he prayed for his country. He prayed for the last of his family as they fled north to avoid the blast. He prayed his sacrifice might help them live to find a better world. He knew America was no longer found inside the borders defined by her leaders.
His country was found in the hearts of those who ran toward freedom.
Rick had hoped to buy them one minute, but by the time he fell to the ground—splashing in a puddle of fuel and death as the bloodied machete fell from his right hand and the live grenade from his left—he had bought them two.
“We’ve got a live sat feed up in five, four, three, two…”
The large screen at the front of the control came to life as a massive explosion enveloped the entire bridge.
“Yes!” Lukas shouted. Fire covered the long bridge from end to end. A few Patriarch tanks emerged from the fire, driving off the side of the bridge aflame as they fell to the river below.
“How many fighters do we have left?” Damian asked.
“Only six, but they didn’t take it out,” Battle Marshal Madison replied. “They’re still engaged by the Patriarchs east of the city.”
“Was it the Yellow Jackets?”
“No, sir,” Battle Marshal Scott replied. “We had some Yellow Jackets break through their lines and cut them off at the south side of the bridge, but their tanks eventually chewed through that detachment. Besides, the Yellow Jackets don’t pack a big enough punch. Whatever took that bridge down wasn’t from us.”
“Then it doesn’t matter,” Lukas said, smiling as the entire bridge began to collapse into the river below.
“We still have a few hundred individuals who crossed the bridge fleeing north,” Damian said.
“Are they a threat?” Lukas asked.
“They shouldn’t be,” Damian said. “They’re most likely frightened refugees who managed to escape. Still, we could possibly reroute a few Yellow Jackets to pursue them.”
“How many Yellow Jackets do we have left?”
“Two hundred and fifty-seven,” Les Scott replied. “We lost hundreds engaging the anti-air, but it looks like we managed to disable most of their air defenses.”
“Good,” Lukas said. “Move the bombers in and hit the Patriarchs hard as soon as it’s safe. When they are finished, move the remaining Yellow Jackets in and mop up any Patriarchs you find.”
“And what of the civilians fleeing north of the bridge?” Damian said. “Do we pursue them?”
“Leave them be,” Lukas replied after a pause. “Let them spread the tales of what happened today. Let this land know the Imperium cannot be stopped.”
Victor Castle cursed as he ran through the dense copse of trees a few hundred feet west of the interstate. Smoke drifted through the air, stinging his eyes and causing him to cough. He tried to duck beneath a low branch that was barren of leaves, but it caught him on the side of his face and slashed a trio of shallow incisions across his cheek. Victor cursed again, his skin prickling with pain.
His mind, with fear.
Victor’s face and the palm of his hand were both red and blistering with second-degree burns, even though he had been at least three hundred feet back from the edge of the fireball. The minutes following the explosion were now lost in a blurry sea of fire and chaos, but he did remember the sinking feeling of knowing their defeat had come.
As poorly-trained Recruits began to flee for safety or fight the Yellow Jackets that moved over them, some fell without being touched—writhing around in agony. O
thers, however, had made a break for it and didn’t fall. Victor realized those who had lost their small, personal IRDs had been the ones who managed to flee. He had looked for his tiny watchdog, unable to locate it anywhere in the air above, before dismounting his tank and making a run for it. Now it was either risk the painful cuts of the dense trees on his burnt skin, die when the Yellow Jackets overwhelmed them, or be thrown back into Sigmund’s hell. Victor now mumbled to himself as he ran, vowing that he would do everything he could to avoid the fires.
He glanced back through the sparse trees as the hum of high-level bombers droned overhead. He broke free of the woods—finding himself on a back alleyway next to a row of trailer homes and a junkyard. Victor ran for the nearest cover, diving behind a broken-down car; the air seemed to pop as a piercing thunder roared from behind him. He covered his ears and screamed, unable to hear his own hollering over the roar behind him. The rumbling continued for what felt like eternity, though barely ten seconds had passed by the time the final bomb had dropped. When it ceased, he opened his eyes, slowly rose, and turned to survey the damage.
The woods he had fled through and the tanks that had been Sigmund’s army were burning five hundred yards away. Only one in ten of the trees remained upright, their naked skeletons alight with dancing fire. Beyond the towering torches, Victor could see the raging blaze and black smoke that consumed the interstate. He could hear the thumping of hundreds of carbon fiber blades and the whine of mini-guns as the Yellow Jackets began to clean up the mess behind the shroud of smoke. Victor exhaled and slowly lowered himself back behind his cover, thankful to be alive and free of Sigmund’s grasp as he began to weep.
A subtle buzz behind him caused him to slowly open his eyes. He looked around to his sides, but his ears couldn’t pinpoint where the noise was coming from. They were still reeling from the concussion a minute earlier. Readying himself to run, he rose and turned, only to find himself face to face with one of Sigmund’s IRDs.
