A Congress of Angels (The Collective)

by Fore, Jon

  "No way," Lowery hissed, "we won’t have vehicles."

  "We can hoof it if we have to. Let's get the men ready to move out."

  "They already are, just not with the equipment."

  Vega could hear just a hint of fear in Lowery's voice. Not much, more like wonder than fear.

  "We can come back and get it. If those bugs are using E.M.P. then they're a lot smarter than we thought. We need to fall back and link up with General Bell's men. Travel over watch with no patrols. Let's get them moving."

  "I need to get my friends.” Vega said before Lowery could acknowledge.

  "Who in the frog-frying hell are you? Lowery, why is there a split tail in my forward patrol? Why the sweet Jesus does this split tail have a battle rifle?"

  "Sir, this is Corporal Vega Severin. She was with us when this all started."

  "That does not explain what the flowery fuck she's doing here, and why she is armed!" Underwear man shouted at Lowery, now only a few inches from the Ranger.

  "I came in from Grundun. I was left there, in a hospital with, might I add, hospital staff.” Vega began to wrestle with a desire to scream this man down, that or knock him down.

  "She is a warrior, sir, and came in from the south about ten minutes ago...."

  "Sir?" A new voice surprised them, and they turned on the kid. He was dark haired, dark eyed, grease up to the elbows, and as young as one could be and still join the service.

  "What is it, Private?"

  "The generators, sir, they're shot. The electric starters are fried. All of them."

  Lowery grab the kid's shoulder in one hand, directing the kids attention to him, "I need you to collect all N.C.O.s on this spot in five minutes. Got it?"

  "Yes, Sergeant.” The kids stammered, saluted the man in his underwear and then ran in a dead sprint apparently not concerned with the darkness.

  "Sir, Severin is an M.P. and one of us."

  "Not a Gad damned Ranger, is she?” The man said, squaring himself with Vega again.

  The security Vega felt when she came across the fire line was dissolving quickly. "We are trying to get North, to Amsterdam. We didn't even know you were here.” She said this was a cold calmness, a calmness she would not have had three days ago.

  "She's Bell's Ranger.” Lowery said.

  Vega didn't know what that meant.

  Underwear man stared at her for a long moment. He was older, his gray already working its way into his short hair, wrinkles already forming at the corners of his eyes. Vega didn't know who he was, but he was clearly in charge and had been for a number of years.

  "Roger that. You collect your friends and get them ready to move. We are out of here.” The man didn't wait for a response, only spun and walked towards a tent barely visible in the small glow of Lowery's flashlight.

  When the man left, the first non-commissioned officer appeared out of the darkness, "What the fuck's up, Lowery?"

  "We think it was an E.M.P. attack. The Commander has decided to pull out and link up with Bell. I need everyone packed and stacked in ten minutes."

  "I need to....” Vega began, but another face appeared.

  "Hey, guys. Someone forget to pay the ole' electric bill or something?” The new guy said. Then Jackson appeared directly behind the smiling man, looming over him, simply easing from the darkness like some enormous specter.

  "We are moving out. I need everyone to fall-in in ten minutes, ready to go," Lowery said, just now noticing the gentle hulk behind the newcomer.

  "You got it," the man said and turned, "Whoa, well, hello there, pretty thing. What are you..."

  Vega could see the man's head roll back on its neck as he tried to take in Jackson standing behind who she knew was Maria.

  "Wow, aren't you a big one?"

  "Yeah, boy-howdy." Jackson's voice was deep and rumbling but still somehow distracted, if not without a wisp of venom.

  "Get it done.” Lowery said.

  The man turned, nodded once, spared another look at the pretty girl, then headed off, shouting to his men.

  "What happened? I've never been in an Earthquake before. Why are all the lights out?" Maria sounded more excited than scared, but she was clearly tired and road weary.

  "E.M.P.," Lowery said, as if some eighteen year old girl would know what that was. "I wouldn't think it would make the ground shake like that."

  "What's that, now?” Jackson asked over Maria's head.

  "Electromagnetic Pulse. It wipes out electronics and data," Vega said.

  "You guys are going to travel with the Commander. We are heading north then east to our...."

  "How far?” Vega asked, then looked at her exhausted friends.

  "About eight miles. I got to get ready to leave. I would stay right here until we leave."

  "We can't go with you.” Vega said to his back, and Lowery stopped.

  He stood there for some time with his back to them, then half turned, "No, I guess not." He said this as if he had already known, and was waiting for her to just drop it on him. "I don't got any jeeps I can give you. You'll be on foot, you know."

  "Yeah, but we have to get to the coast. We have to get back to America."

  Lowery seemed to pause for a moment, a long moment, staring at the ground beneath him. It was just a ruddy surface in the red light of his flashlight. Then he turned and walked back to Vega, close to Vega, "You'll be A.W.O.L., but I suppose that doesn't matter?"

  "Not anymore. I have something I have to do...." she trailed off, not sure why it felt wrong to talk about what they were trying to do, to stop this whole invasion. Probably because it was so impossible, so likely to fail.

  Lowery stared at her for another long while, trapping her eyes with his, then leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. "I wanted to know you better, Vega Severin.” He lifted his arm and pointed in a general direction, "Supply tent is that way. There is no way we can carry all the stores without vehicles, so help yourself. If Corporal Hughes is there, you tell him I said you could have whatever you wanted.” He trailed off a moment, then added, "You be safe.” Without another word, he turned and strode away.

  "Are we really going to walk to Amsterdam from here?” Jackson asked, his arm was now draped around Maria's shoulder and she held his hand in a loose grip.

  "If we have to," Vega said.

  "Yeah, if we have to.” Maria agreed.

  Vega looked at her friends. They were all more than friends now. She could feel the link between them, all of them. "Let's go get some gear. I have an idea, but we have to wait until we're alone.

  Chapter 13

  Gabriel spent the next three days practicing evasion, a skill they taught him in both boot camp, Recon, and finally in Sniper school. Sniper school was the most thorough, and so the hardest, but he fell to it naturally. Being sneaky was something he'd done every time he went hunting. It was especially important during deer season. Deer were uncanny with stealth, so Gabriel became rather good at it at an early age.

  Regardless of his training and his early-age hunting, practicing stealth and evasion with two horses who left their droppings wherever, and a dog that pissed on everything that didn't run away first was both difficult and time consuming. Still, that first day from the house he did managed to make the border of Connecticut. He wasn't perfectly sure, but almost. Vermont and Connecticut looked a lot alike when there wasn't much more than trees to see.

  Since the humming Earthquake, his G.P.S had stopped working. Its batteries were almost dead anyway, but still. That Earthquake seemed to kill anything with batteries. Except for the flashlight. That still worked but sucked at telling him his current position. That and when he did cross into Connecticut, he was too far from any road that might have a welcome sign or a now leaving sign. He'd been in the woods now for three days, only once stumbling across a farmer's field bloated with young grains. The farmer's house was dark and distant, and Gabriel didn't want to wake up under the gaze of the demon breed again, so he kept to the forests.

&
nbsp; Fug had run out of food, and was now eating jerky with Gabriel. The dog loved the stuff, but that was running thin as well. Gabriel really expected to find more food on the way, but just finding enough water for the horses was a chore in and of itself. Funny how Recon or Sniper school didn't teach you how to travel with animals. But it was this lack of food that cinched Gabriel's decision to head into the next town.

  He had breached the head of Berkshire mountain and could see below him a small town nestled there, away from the mainstream tourism. A central road swept in a curving arch between shallow buildings and in and among the thicker clutches of trees were small homesteads. Gabriel could tell that the invasion had passed through here. The burned buildings and collapsed structures made that obvious. There was that and the entire lack of movement below.

  The roads in the small town were not large by any means, and he couldn't see anyone walking along the sidewalks and no cars moving. He was a good distance away, but still, a glimmer of chrome in the muted light, the sound of car doors or broken mufflers or something would indicate life. But there was none of this. It was a dead town, a ghost town, but it may still hide some food somewhere. Considering the amount of forest and the large lake near the town commons, there had to be a sporting goods store somewhere down there.

  The horses had a bit of trouble getting to the top of the mountain, even though it was really more of a hill. It would look taller from the town as it was nestled in the crux of two mountains, in their valley, but it really wasn't. The horses were growing tired of the daylong travel, day after day, sometimes into the night. That and the minuscule diet he could afford them had to weigh on their energy stores as well. So he rested them, let them munch on the remains of a field of blueberry bushes for a long while before continuing. He and Fug leaned into a tree while the horses ate, and munched on a couple strips of jerky.

  Gabriel led the horses on foot, down the steeper parts of the mountain, picking his way around glacial boulders and the areas dense with trees or thorny bushes. It seemed odd to him that the thorn covered vines seemed to thrive in this new weather, or at least, not shrivel and dry up like other plants. He supposed it had to do with the hardier stems and they too would eventually die away. But for now, they were an insistent problem. The lower on the mountainside he got, the thicker they became, but he eventually found a road that wound towards the center of town.

  The buildings were not tall, the tallest three stories, and nearly every one of them was damaged in some way. Not outright destroyed, but scarred or bruised and in some instances, burned. The street lights were dark, and considering the blackish cloud cover, Gabriel was sure they would have turned themselves on if they could have, so he knew there was no electricity here either.

  He led Lance--still on foot--towards town, followed by Big Guy. They both seemed nervous and a bit skittish. However, Fug made his rounds marking everything with urine in a fifteen yard perimeter.

  At the end of this road, they came upon Main Street, and the two rows of buildings. They structures stood side by side, their shoulders shrugged as if ashamed of the damage they had suffered. Aluminum siding was torn away, large plate glass windows were shattered, sometimes inward, sometimes outward, and the place smelled of dried blood and burned plastics. Above this was a faint distant smell of that sour vegetable, that rotted potato stench that always seemed to precede the coming of the demons. This time, unlike the last, the smell seemed old, as if they were here and were now long gone. Gabriel hoped this was true.

  He stood waiting for some time, watching Fug sniff around, listening for any noise. Even the wind seemed to avoid this town, this dead place. At one end a stop light hung limply and much too low, its glaring warnings now dark. The other end was a stop sign still standing proud and defiant to traffic that wasn't there. Not now. Not for a long while, if ever. To Gabriel, what he was seeing was the existential small American town, but dead and barren, and he swallowed the rage rising in his throat.

  In his mind's eye, he could see the street with cars, people walking along the sidewalks, the little cafe across the road open and people sitting and sipping their coffees, talking. That was the way it was supposed to be. That was why this place was built. To have it destroyed like this, the people killed for no more reason than their existence, enraged him. This was supposed to be his America, the one he fought two wars for. Not some playground for these evil things that came from nowhere. The deer jerky began to make a slow crawl in his stomach and acid bloomed in his throat.

  He turned right, the majority of town laying in that direction, and began walking. He was looking for a grocery or a sporting goods store. Food and supplies. Maybe he could even find a G.P.S system to replace his dead one. Just as good would be a thicker sleeping bag, one designed more for the cold weather he was traveling in. The cold weather that shouldn't be here, at least not until January.

  The first shop was a small eatery, not quite a diner. It was narrow with few tables and chairs and was entirely destroyed inside. The tables were smashed and the chairs all lay on their sides in disorganized piles and angles. Even the walls had been brutalized and smashed with holes left gaping. Streamers of chalk and torn wallpaper hung from the plaster gashing. Some artificial plant, vines maybe, were scattered in abundance with dime store artwork and what might have been menus. The place smelled of rotten food and old ash.

  Gabriel moved along to the next storefront to find much the same thing, only this time it was a fashion boutique, the overpriced clothing torn and tossed and smelling of rotten potatoes, blood, and urine. This shop had a body, unlike the restaurant. It was a woman, a large woman. Her clothing was torn away along with her flesh, making Gabriel's guess at gender only that; a guess. Though there was long hair of black and grey and the sheet of torn fabric that could have only been a moo-moo. The sign over this store had fallen on one side making it hang slanted. The name read 'A Stitch in Time, Fine Clothing and Accessories.'

  Big Guy was beginning to get nervous, and Gabriel decided it was the smell of death, among other stenches. Lance seemed okay and willing to go on. Fug was still exploring, but perhaps a bit closer to his master and with a more timid nose. Each piece of refuse was sniffed thoroughly before moving on to the next. Gabriel looked back to the older horse and tried to will him calm as he continued to the next shop.

  Grit and broken glass crunched beneath his boot as he walked, the horses hooves making much the same sound. The small town was that still, that empty. Gabriel could hear in his head a tone from some old western movie where the hero gunslinger walked alone through the center of town plagued by unseen outlaws. The outlaws knew, the people watching the movie knew, only the hero was unaware of the ambush; or so we all thought. Gabriel wondered if there was something watching him, a man shaped something, waiting to pounce.

  A chill found the spot between his shoulders and played there. It wasn't until that very moment that Gabriel realized he did feel someone watching him. That vague distant feeling that in the shadows was a watcher, a watcher waiting.

  The next shop was a hardware store that looked as though a tornado had spawned right in the center of the shop. Shelving and signage and chrome coated tools were scattered in and amongst yard tools and lumber and garden hoses and all the things a small hardware store should stock. This building, this bit of Main Street, U.S.A. was collapsed in the rear. Through this hole, Gabriel could see dead and dried shrubbery still in their disposable plastic pots. He didn't see any bodies in the store, and decided not to look hard enough to find any.

  The next store was unidentifiable. Most of what it was was burned to ash along with a number of shops beside it. The flames had scarred the wall separating the hardware store and whatever commercial spot this had once been. Timber, or the thinned remains of timber, had fallen from the roofing structure and the firewall, scattering ashen debris and lengths of black wood over everything. Like the next seven stores, all that remained was a cinderblock, or sometimes brick, firewall between each shop, bla
ckened and charred like overcooked meat.

  When he came to the next shop, at least the next shop that was still standing, it was an insurance broker, or what remained of an insurance broker. It may have been a travel agency, but either was a guess based on the small come-sit-with-me desks and pairs of chairs. This space was not tossed like the others, but damaged by smoke and weather nonetheless. The large display window in front was smashed and the mini-blinds were torn from the mounts on one side. The thin louvers rustled in a light breeze coming in over the lake, making a hollow metallic sound.

  Here a street lamp was on its side, another victim to the onslaught of whatever destroyed this town. Its base was cracked, the metal and fiberglass tubing snapped and the ornate artificially aged arms at the top had penetrated the next shop, driving itself through like a spike. The window was broken, the awning was torn, and the eave above the window pulverized. But inside this shop, just a few feet from where Gabriel peered through the broken glass was a smashed display case. In the remains of this display case were a number of consumer grade handguns.

  Sporting goods store.

  Gabriel went beneath the light pole to the door and found it locked. It had a wrought iron curved handle with no mechanism. You just pulled and entered. Only something in the door wouldn't allow it to open. Then Gabriel realized the majority of the door was actually a pane of glass. The blinds hanging on the other side still appeared undisturbed if not a bit weathered. But what was important was the glass, which he jammed his foot through.

  His leg had healed well over the past few days, enough now that it didn't constantly ache. But this action bought him a bite of pain and a pointed reminder he had laid stitches there himself just a few days ago. But the glass did break, collapsing on itself and falling off his shin in large hunks. The noise was terrible, making him flinch and curse himself for not thinking this little activity through.

  When the glass had settled Big Guy snorted, and then it was silent again. Gabriel's hands found both revolvers and he turned slowly, looking for motion, listening for sound, cursing in his head. He wasn't just jumpy anymore, he was bordering on outright fear. But fear was good. Fear was safe. Fear made him careful.