Midnight City: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series)

by J. Barton Mitchell

  But then Holt placed a bullet between its eyes. It fell dead to the roof.

  Holt put two fingers in his mouth, whistled loudly.

  Max reluctantly leapt off the Forsaken and ran back toward Holt. The crazy jumped up, shrieked and hissed, charged after the dog … then rocked back as another shot from Holt dropped it.

  Max made it back, tail wagging, tongue lagging out of his mouth. “Good job, pal,” Holt said.

  “The Max is tough!” Zoey said, reaching out to pet him. The dog licked her face.

  More explosions, more plasma fire, more shrieks …

  Holt looked to Mira. “Mira, what do you got?”

  “Concentrating,” she replied testily.

  She was combining items from her pack. Two dimes, a marble, and another combination she had already wrapped, which looked like it contained more coins, a D battery, and an old bottle cap. She placed the dimes on either end, heads facing out, then quickly wrapped the whole thing in duct tape.

  There was a hum, a shimmering … and the air all around them flashed in a bright sphere of light. But only for a second, then it was gone.

  “Gotta hurry,” she said, looking at Holt. “I only had dimes left, and they won’t last long.”

  Holt wasn’t sure what that meant, but he didn’t feel a pressing need for clarification right then.

  “Zoey.” Holt motioned the little girl onto his back. She climbed on, held on tight. He looked up at Mira. “Don’t worry about Max, he’ll jump on his own.”

  Mira fixed Holt with an icy stare. “He’ll jump on his own? Then why did I carry him last time?”

  “I thought it would be funny?” he said, smiling and running for the edge of the roof with Zoey. He whistled three notes and Max darted after him.

  Mira glared knives after the three of them … then rushed to follow.

  As they sprinted across the roof, a new sound overpowered even the mad ramblings of the hundreds of Forsaken. Strange, electronically distorted trumpeting sounds, coming from all directions. The walkers positioned around the sunken ruins had spotted them.

  While Holt ran, he watched in awe as the strange walkers leapt toward them in pursuit, closing fast, bounding with agility and speed from roof to roof. Not even Mantises could move that fast and precisely. They’d be on them in seconds.

  The nearby Forsaken hissed horribly, lunging after them, too, closing fast. Holt watched them coming closer and closer.

  “Mira!” Holt shouted with concern. What was she going to do?

  “Just keep going!” Mira yelled back.

  The Forsaken rushed toward Holt … then bounced violently backwards as they ran into some kind of invisible force field. Mira’s artifact, whatever it was, was working.

  Holt double-timed it, leapt off the edge, and sailed across. Zoey screamed with glee behind him as they hit hard on the roof of the ruined radio station.

  Max landed next to them, followed by Mira, who was still glaring at him.

  But before she could say anything, something slammed into her force field and bounced off. Not one of the Forsaken, not even a plasma bolt. Something else.

  A mass of some kind of metallic netting lay a few feet away.

  One of the green and orange tripods was closing the gap between them quickly. Another net launched from under its body and exploded toward them.

  It crashed into the shield and bounced harmlessly away just like the first. The walker trumpeted in anger, charged after them.

  Holt and Mira looked at each other. They both knew the nets were for Zoey.

  They dashed for the radio tower in a mad scramble. Plasma fire lit the air in bright, strobic flashes of yellow as they did. The bolts plowed into their shield, and it flared brightly, spraying sparks everywhere. Bolt after bolt hit as they moved … until the whole thing finally flared out. The air around them shimmered one last time as the force field died.

  They all ducked behind the supports of the huge radio tower as more plasma fire burned past. The tower pressed into the night sky far above. It was rusting and aged, and leaned to the right just a little, but it was still holding on.

  Holt peered out through the metal rungs of the tower.

  He had a good view of the sunken city. The Forsaken were pouring over the buildings: mad, frantic, running shadows in the night, closing in from all directions. Easier to spot were the walkers, also headed for them. But they were now directly fighting the crazed humans.

  Individually, the Forsaken were no match for their cannons. But more and more were coming, an unending wave of insanity that didn’t care how many were decimated, only obsessively fixed on reaching the walkers and ripping them to pieces with their bare hands. Or at least trying.

  They piled onto one of the machines, a dozen of them, tearing and clawing at it, ripping its cables and hoses.

  The tripod trumpeted, stumbled, crashed to the roof. Even more Forsaken leapt onto it, burying it under their dirty weight.

  Two or three of the walkers hadn’t made the mistake of stopping to fight the Forsaken; they kept firing and moving, leaping rooftop to rooftop, making a beeline for the radio tower.

  Holt guessed they’d be on them in seconds.

  “We need to knock this thing over,” Holt said to Mira, rapping his fist on the radio tower’s thick support.

  More plasma fire flashed around them, more hissing and jabbering.

  Mira stared at Holt like he was crazy. “Knock it over?” she said, aghast. “That’s your plan? Knock over the giant metal radio tower? Have you noticed how big it is?”

  “I figured you had some crazy Strange Lands thing that—”

  “Well, I don’t! I don’t carry around a storehouse of artifacts with me, Holt! There’s only so much I can do with what I—”

  More plasma fire ripped into the tower, spraying sparks everywhere. They all ducked. Where the yellow bolts hit, the metal flashed white hot, melted, and crumbled.

  Holt stared up at the damage, thoughts swirling in his head. He looked and saw the walkers closing the distance.

  With a grimace, he shouldered his rifle and shotgun, drew the Beretta. Holt aimed through the metal rungs of the support tower at the closest green and orange walker … and fired.

  The bullet clanged harmlessly off its armor.

  “What are you doing?” Mira asked, staring at him.

  “Trying to piss them off.” Holt knew the shot wouldn’t hurt the walker; he only wanted to get its attention. And judging by the volley of plasma fire it unleashed in his direction, he guessed he had.

  Holt leapt and grabbed the tower support above, pulling himself up and onto it.

  “Holt!” Zoey yelled below him.

  “Be right back, get ready to move!” he shouted back down.

  More plasma fire sparked and flashed around him, cutting into the tower, melting and incinerating whatever it hit.

  Holt barely dodged two bolts that almost took off his head. Out the corner of his eye, he caught the very visible rapid-fire flashing of the walkers’ cannon again.

  Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

  More yellow bolts slammed into the metal around him. Holt maneuvered in a circle around the tower, drawing the fire of the walkers. More and more plasma bolts sparked and fizzled into the structure.

  The tower began to groan as it weakened. The metal snapped and tore. Its ancient, rusted bolts exploded outward in sheets like gunfire, whizzing through the air.

  Below, almost in slow motion, Holt saw Max barking furiously, saw Mira leap and cover Zoey, pulling her down and away.

  The tower began to tip, ripping free of its supports, arcing through the air. Holt leapt clear as the whole thing thundered downward and crashed to the sunken ground below in a painful maelstrom of sound.

  Holt hit the roof hard, rolled, crashed to a stop with a grunt. He coughed out lungfuls of rust and dust, and painfully pushed himself back to his feet.

  The crumpled radio tower now made a bridge over the water, s
tretching from the radio station to the shallow waters at the other end of the sunken city.

  He was glad to see Mira had figured out his intention, and wasn’t wasting any time. She carried Zoey in her arms, rushed onto and down the tower toward the ground as fast as she could manage. Max rushed ahead of her, barking enthusiastically.

  Behind them, one of the nets flashed by, just missing them. The walkers were on their tail, leaping from the roof of the building next door and onto the radio station.

  And so were the Forsaken. The crazed shadows ran onto the tower in a swarm of dirty claws and teeth and bodies, hissing after Mira and Zoey.

  “Hurry!” Holt ran after them, firing the Beretta into the mass of Forsaken until the clip emptied, dropping three or four of them.

  But there were more coming. Far too many. The devastation of the tower collapse had stirred them up like a beehive: they were everywhere now.

  Holt saw the top of Mira’s head disappear below the roof edge, and he double-timed it.

  Behind him came sounds of heavy stomping, the roof shaking with each hit. The sounds were gaining on him fast.

  Holt had just enough time to look behind and see a green and orange tripod right behind him. It trumpeted and lashed out with a mechanical leg, tripping him. He went down, hit the roof, rolled.

  Up close, he saw more of the walker’s details. Its three pointed legs were triple jointed, the fuselage on top of them round and sleek. It was a Hunter, Holt guessed. Probably designed specifically for speed and tracking, and it had done its job well. The walker leapt for him.

  He drew his shotgun, tried to twist back around to his—

  The walker knocked the gun away, sent it sliding across the gravel. Holt barely dodged one of the thing’s legs as it trumpeted, puncturing the roof where he’d just been standing.

  He dodged again, leapt for the gun, grabbed it, rolled over, aimed.

  The walker trumpeted angrily and pounced forward.

  The Ithaca was fully loaded, and Holt fired every shell it had right into the thing’s three-optic “eye” in the center of its body. It was the smallest Assembly walker he’d ever seen, and he just hoped he had a chance of hurting it.

  Each shot rocked the thing backwards in a plume of sparks, shuddering along the roof … and then fire sprayed out of it in a violent arc, lighting up the night air. The walker collapsed in a whine of dying power and failing mechanics.

  Holt groaned, got to his feet. This was quite a week he was—

  He shut his eyes as a dazzling field of golden, wavering energy poured into the air from the wrecked green and orange machine.

  Holt backed up at the light, it was so intense. His head filled with static, as it had been in Zoey’s crashed ship days earlier. He held his ears, backing up, blinded and deaf.

  Screeches filled the air all around him. It must be having the same effect on the Forsaken.

  The energy field rose into the air, contorting and forming into a crystalline shape of near impossible geometry. As it did, the static in his head lessened, the brightness faded.

  More plasma bolts slapped into the roof all around him. Two more walkers rushed for him.

  Holt forgot about the golden light, made a beeline for the collapsed tower. If he could just reach it …

  Behind him, he heard another electronic trumpeting from one of the walkers. The Forsaken swarmed it, dozens and dozens of them, pouring onto it, clawing and tearing at it. The thing trumpeted again, loud and angry.

  It gave him the delay he needed. Holt reached the fallen tower and dashed down it toward the flood bank. In front of him, he saw that Mira, Zoey, and Max had already made it, were running into the night.

  Behind him, the Forsaken continued to pile onto the green and orange walker. There were too many; the thing couldn’t keep moving, couldn’t stay up.

  It fell to the side … right off the edge of the roof, tumbling downward with a distorted trumpet that almost sounded frightened. It crashed into the deep, black murk below, sending a giant splash of water everywhere.

  As it did, a crackling explosion of energy flared out from it, fire blowing out the walker’s exhaust ports. Holt stopped, stunned, and watched as a black, burned, rustlike substance formed over the walker’s surface, covering it in seconds like some metallic, cancerous mass. The machine shook a few times, contorted … and then went still, frozen like a rusted black statue in the water.

  Now it made sense. The black rust happened when the machines were destroyed in water, and when they did, no golden energy lifted up and out of them. It was relevant, Holt was sure … but he just didn’t know why.

  Holt looked back toward the ruined city. The Forsaken were coming, rushing after him in a mass of insanity and curled fingernails.

  The remaining walkers had their hands full, their plasma bolts flashing everywhere, incinerating the crazies, knocking them back with their legs. But for every one they dispatched, five more took its place.

  Holt watched the impossible chaos a moment more, then ran down the fallen tower, navigating its holes and bent metal as fast as he could. He hopped into the water and ran for the shadows of Mira, Zoey, and Max waiting up ahead. They had done it. They were going to make it—they were going to survive the Drowning Plains.

  Behind them, the sunken, ruined city burned, lighting up the night in black-tinged orange shadows. Electronic cries and hissing nonsense filled the air long after they had left the flames behind.

  22. NIGHTMARES

  A YOUNG HOLT; his sister, Emily; and their mother pushed past the door into the dark farmhouse and ducked inside as the whine of engines outside grew to a fever pitch. Through the house’s windows, Holt saw the lights of the strange ships in the sky painting the ground as they flew over. One of them lighted the house, filling the windows with brightness.

  Holt’s mother gasped, pulled her children back against a wall, and Holt shut his eyes tight as the engines roared above. He felt Emily shaking next to him, heard his mother’s whispers that everything was going to be okay.

  The searchlight flashed off; the whine of engines, mercifully, began to recede.

  The three risked a glance out the window. The night sky was full of the flashing lights of the strange machines. The sight took Holt’s breath away. He could never have imagined that many aircraft in the sky at once. The ground everywhere outside was being hammered by their cannon fire, yellow bolts of light flashing down and incinerating everything beneath them. From the window, Holt saw two houses in flames.

  They’d made it to this abandoned farmhouse after a frantic run from Fort Connor in the family car, before it ran out of fuel and stranded them on a deserted rural road. They weren’t alone long, though. In the sky, shapes moved.

  Flickering lights, like airplanes, darting along the horizon at impossible speeds and angles. Yellow pinpricks flared from them, streaming toward the ground. Wherever they hit, fire blossomed up in the distance.

  And they were coming closer. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe, flying through the air, those flashes of yellow pummeling everything. Flames shot upward where they hit, followed by the sounds of explosions, a percussive string of pops and bangs.

  They had run, panicked, the roaring of strange engines growing louder behind them, until Emily spotted the farmhouse, and they dashed for it, made it inside as the machines buzzed over.

  Now those things were blowing up every house in the landscape. They saw the destruction through the window as it happened. But why did they leave this one alone? They definitely saw it: the light had lit it up for a full minute. Holt didn’t know the answer.

  Holt, Emily, and their mother moved through the abandoned house until they found the kitchen. Holt’s mother picked him up and placed him on the counter. Emily wet some rags and wiped his face, cleaning off the tearstains and the dirt. He tolerated the cleaning without complaint.

  Their mother flipped on a small TV on the counter, tuned it to a cable news channel. The picture wasn’t very good, it was choppy
and grainy and the feed kept cutting in and out, but Holt could make out a headline running across the top of the fragmented screen.

  NORTH AMERICA INVADED.

  As the silent video flashed on and off, Holt tried to read the ticker tape news items scrolling across the bottom.

  CONTACT LOST WITH WASHINGTON, MIAMI, HOUSTON, DENVER, BISMARCK, PHOENIX, LOS ANGELES, SAN FRANCISCO.…

  UNCLEAR IF OTHER COUNTRIES ARE BEING ATTACKED, INTERCONTINENTAL COMMUNICATION IS DOWN …

  NEW YORK CITY IN FLAMES …

  UNCONFIRMED REPORTS THAT PRESIDENT GISONDI WAS EVACUATED FROM THE WHITE HOUSE TO AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION.…

  IDENTITY OF INVADERS STILL UNKNOWN, BUT SEEM TO POSSESS ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY AND SUPERIOR NUMBERS …

  GROWING NUMBER OF EXPERTS BELIEVE INVASION MAY BE OF ALIEN ORIGIN.…

  And there it was.

  Alien origin. The world ground to a halt at the weight of the idea. Even though he was young, even though he had nothing to confirm the thought, Holt knew it was right. Nothing else made sense. The glowing clouds, the huge, dark shape that slammed into Denver, the aircraft that moved at impossible speeds, the yellow bolts of light …

  Suddenly, from outside, came a low thump. Deep and powerful.

  They were all instantly alert. The hair on Holt’s arms stood up. What could make a sound like—?

  Two more thumps, a little louder. Three more, louder, closer. Plates in the kitchen cabinets shook ominously at each impact.

  The thuds were coming in threes, and they began to sound like something … walking. Something big. And mechanical.

  A thought occurred to Holt: Maybe the airships didn’t destroy the farmhouse on purpose. Maybe they knew it wasn’t abandoned. Maybe whatever was outside … was coming for them.

  The footfalls grew closer, louder, deeper. Whatever it was, it was huge.

  The boy’s mother grabbed her children, ran for the living room. There were stairs heading up to the bedrooms, and they climbed them quickly, peering out a window on the top floor.

  Outside, the shadows moved.

  Giant forms marched across the fields beyond the farmhouse. Too far off to see clearly, but they were coming.