by Lundy, W. J.
“I don’t understand your reasoning,” she said.
James reached to his hip and drew a long, custom Ka-Bar.
“I’m just saying it isn’t healthy to be caught in a lie. You sure you ain’t got something on you?”
He leaned in close, slowly turning the blade so the alien could see it from every angle while the light reflected off the sharpened surface. James grabbed the chest of her uniform with his gloved hand and pulled it tight. “Now you’ll have to take it easy on me. I’m not used to undressing ladies this way.” She drew away from him. He stuck the blade close to the fabric and let the razor-sharp knife sink into the material. It cut as easy as silk, quickly splitting with slow movements of the blade.
She lugged back again and turned her head to the side. “Yes, I have such a device.”
“Ah, really? You mind telling me where it is?”
She stretched out her bound arms and looked to her balled up left hand. “It’s in the glove.”
Rogers stood from the bench he was leaning on. “Now hold up; that’s the weaponized hand.” He moved forward so he was in front of her. “Tell us how to safely remove it, or I’ll cut the entire arm off.”
She scowled, turning away from Rogers, not liking his harsh tones. “The glove cannot be removed with my hand like this.”
Losing patience, Jesse stood up and, moving closer, he said, “Let’s just kill this thing and get rid of it.” He stepped close to get a better view. Other men nodded, agreeing with him.
She shook her head, worry now clearly showing in her eyes. “The glove is not a weapon. It is not lethal. Only designed to render obedience.”
“I can think of only one good way to do this.” Rogers reached out violently and grabbed her bound wrists, pulling them tight, and dragging the alien partway across the floor as she whined in protest. Then he brought in his boot and stepped on her forearms, applying so much pressure that Jacob thought her arms might break. She yelped and cried out in pain, having been surprised by the big man’s sudden movements.
“What the hell are you doing?” James said. “Take it easy, boss.”
Rogers turned his head. “Shut up and get it off. Cut it at the elbow.”
“No… take it easy. Let me try first. I can get it off. ” James scrambled, grabbing at the thing’s fingertips. The alien, frightened yet complying, straightened them just enough so that James could slowly roll the glove off of the creature’s hands. All the while, the thing struggled and kicked against Rogers’ boot.
“I got it,” James said, pulling back at the strips of heavy tape before taking the metallic glove tight in his hand.
Rogers stepped away and the alien pulled back, crashing against the wall and bringing its hands up to shield its now tear-covered face.
“Well, look at that… the space lady has feelings,” Rogers said, unaffected.
Jesse stepped closer, pointing at the alien’s face. “Don’t let it fool you, Sarge; it’s a killer. I saw them firsthand.”
“You are the killers,” she gasped.
Ignoring her comment, James laughed as he stretched the glove out and examined it. “Relax guys, we got it off,” he said.
He turned the glove over; in the palm was a diamond-shaped pendant. All the fingers were coated in a type of silicone with embedded circuitry clearly visible. James stretched the glove out and laid it flat on his palm, the entire piece far smaller than his own hand.
“What does it do?”
“It’s of no use to you,” she said.
James grinned and let out a short laugh. “That’s not what I asked. So this is what you used to knock me on my ass; how is it powered?”
“I don’t understand.”
Jacob scooched closer; he reached out for the glove and James obliged by handing it over. He felt the wires and squeezed the pendant between his fingers. “The energy source; what activates the crystal?”
“It is part of my being; the same as how the rifles are part of the Ursus warriors. We all have a role.”
James took the glove back. “Ursus? You mean the big bastards with the red sleeves?”
“I understand your word bastard, and this is not correct. The Ursus are brave warriors, bred for war; they come from strong family units.”
James smiled and glanced at the pant legs of his uniform, where he’d wiped his hands earlier. “Well, they bleed like pigs.” James looked her in the eye and saw he got no response from his comment. “How many Ursus will they send for you?” he asked.
She eyed up at him. “I’m not important enough for them to look for me.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Karina, a guide for my people.”
“What were you doing out here?”
“I am a guide; I was searching for survivors so that they could be safely returned to the community.”
“You mean prisoners.” Jacob leaned in. “What have you done with them?”
She shot him a puzzled glance. “We have cared for them, given them food and shelter; they are part of the communal now.”
“You have my family; I want them back.”
“Then you should join them. All are welcome in the communal.”
Answering for Jacob, James scoffed. “My people got a saying, lady… better dead than red!”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t understand this red.”
Rogers laughed and said, “Different time, but the same principle applies. We’ll get our people back.”
James nodded and winked at her. “We need a vehicle to get into that camp,” he said before he turned to Rogers still standing over his shoulder. “How many claymore mines do we have left?”
Rogers smiled, knowing the bearded scout’s intentions. “We can spare a couple.”
She glared up at him. “Why would you need mines?”
“I figured we could see if you’re right—that they wouldn’t bother looking for you. I’ll stack the dead out there and this glove right down the throat of a mine.”
Her eyes shifted from the glove and back to the door. “There is no more cause for this violence; if you lay down your weapons it could all stop.”
“Nope. That’s not our way,” Rogers said. “Thought we explained that.”
“You must understand… the war is over. You have lost.”
James shook his head. “I think you’re the one who is not understanding. You all just got here; we weren’t even trying earlier.”
“Your big cities have already fallen, and your armies destroyed or surrendered. Only small pockets of resistance remain, and they will be squashed with the exodus.” Her tone changed from weakness to one of strength.
Rogers stepped over her and looked down. “Bullshit. What is the exodus?”
She smiled, showing perfectly shaped white teeth. “Our people will arrive. What you have seen is only an advanced party meaning to pull out and detect your remaining forces. The exodus will force you to submit and join us, or cease to exist.”
“Why the hell would you tell us this, anyway?” James said arrogantly.
“It is our law. You have captured me rightfully in combat or by submission; I now belong to you,” she said. “Same as your people now in the communal belong to us.”
“Unless we take them back,” Jacob retorted.
She nodded in agreement. “Yes, of course. Or if you surrender and become a part of us.”
“You’d be surprised what it takes for us to surrender,” James spat back.
Karina openly smiled at his statement. “Surprisingly little; your governments have already petitioned for peace. Your people have been approaching our communities of their own free will offering surrender, and once others hear the peace signal, we expect your remaining forces to join the communal.”
Jacob reached out and put a hand on Rogers’ shoulder. “The people at the orb… the civilians… the ones being escorted by The Darkness—”
“Escorted for their protection,” Karina interrupted. “Tribes and those like you have be
come a danger to everyone. If you had not fired on our landers…”
Rogers put up a hand between Jacob and the alien. “You said peace signal?”
She nodded, taking her eyes from Jacob’s hateful stare. “Yes, it is being broadcast now, over clear channels, on what you call FM.”
Rogers scrambled to the back, pushing the soldier away from the radio console. “We’ve only been searching our military frequencies; of course we should have looked at the local FM.” He flipped dials and switched a speaker, filling the space with static. He dialed the knob until it locked on a clear, clean channel with a steady voice.
“… lay down your weapons, the armed resistance has been disbanded. We have lost our ability to fight back. For the sake of all of us, I ask that you surrender and go to the road un-armed. You will be given sanctuary; food and shelter will be provided. Our friends have guaranteed our safety. Please… this is the only way to stop the bloodshed.”
Jacob thought he recognized the voice and whispered, “He sounds familiar.”
“It’s the Vice President,” a soldier in the back uttered. “What does this mean?”
Rogers flipped off the radio. “Don’t mean nothing; we go in tomorrow.”
Chapter Seventy-Eight
They stood two deep, partially concealed in the tree lines and overgrown grass. Sunlight reflected off the blued barrels of their rifles. The Darkness had them surrounded, but for some reason still hadn’t moved against them.
Clem stood on a wooden crate, observing them through a hole in the brick wall of the warehouse while the survivors had moved to the rear of the large building. The space, which looked like a loading dock, was filled with vehicles of all make and model, and had two tall overhead doors chained shut at the end of the wall. The women ran about, hurriedly packing their gear and preparing for a hasty withdrawal.
“How many?” Masterson asked. Standing just below Clem, the old soldier was pulling belts of linked ammo from his pack and prepping his machine gun for a fight.
“Got to be over a hundred of ’em.”
“And the uniformed critters?” Masterson asked.
Clem shook his head then leapt off the crate. “None yet.”
Ruth rushed up behind them, followed by a group of girls carrying large duffel bags and boxes of canned goods. She stopped beside them as the other girls continued to load the vehicles. “We’re going to break out,” she said. “If we hurry, we can make the woods before they organize. If their vehicles show up, we won’t have a chance.”
Clem watched as children were loaded into the cabs of vans and pickup trucks parked in long columns just behind the sliding doors of the warehouse. Women with worried expressions stood watch over the vehicles as the precious cargo was loaded.
“No, it won’t work,” Clem said, not taking his eyes from the vehicles.
“What choice do we have? We can’t stand against this many; they’ll have us completely blocked in soon enough.”
Clem looked down, locking eyes with Masterson, who nodded in response. “Get us someplace high; we’ll help you get past them. If you have any of those Molotovs left, we could use them.”
Ruth gazed at them and then back to the overloaded vehicles. “You don’t have to do this. We’d have a chance on the road.”
Clem shrugged. “Like you said, what choice do you have? We can cover you and fight it out on our own. Just get your people someplace safe.”
Ruth frowned and pointed to a wooden crate along the wall. “There… that’s what we have left. At the end of the room you’ll find an iron staircase; it leads to the roof.” She stepped forward and grabbed Clem in a tight-gripped bear hug. “We can’t thank you enough for this,” she whispered to him.
“Just wait for us to open fire then get them out of here. Get as far away from this place as you can,” Clem said.
She let go and gave Masterson the same kind of hug before turning away and barking orders at the girls, rushing them to finish loading. Clem watched her leave before looking over at his friend. “You ready to go to work?”
Masterson dipped his chin and lifted the heavy machine gun to his chest. “Yeah, too much estrogen in this place. Let’s get up top. I need some fresh air.”
Moving past him, Clem slapped his friend on the shoulder. They stopped at the crate, grabbing as many bottles as they could carry, before moving to the staircase. The stairs were old and screeched as they climbed them. The spots where wrought iron brackets met the brick shook and spit crumbled mortar in protest. The stairway ended at a pigeon-feces-covered exit. Clem passed through the doorway and stepped onto the roof. The perimeter of the area was lined with a three-foot-tall, red brick knee wall. In the middle, surrounded by rotting piles of leaves, empty trash cans, and liquor bottles probably left by exploring teens, stood the remains of a crumbled utility building.
Clem heard the truck engines fire up below and knew they were ready. He pointed to a section of the low wall that would be to the right of the overhead doors below. “You post up there; I’ll take the other side.”
Masterson nodded and dropped down, duck-walking to sneak into cover without the Deltas on the ground spotting them. Clem did the same by belly crawling up to the knee wall and letting the barrel of his rifle slowly move into position. He looked across the opening to Masterson and waited for the man to flash him a thumbs up before he crept his head over the ledge.
All along the front the things waited. Still standing shoulder to shoulder in some sort of wall, it would make for easy shooting. From the overhead door, a cracked and broken asphalt drive wended away before vanishing into the thick of the woods, giving the trucks a reasonable chance of escape. When he heard the engines revving below, Clem searched for targets, trying to identify a leader, or an obvious choice to kick off the attack. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a cluster of the Deltas charging forward. He’d waited too long, maybe it was too late.
Masterson also saw the rushing group; without hesitation, he lit the first of his Molotovs and tossed it into the open ground just in front of the advancing group. With the splash of flame, the remaining Deltas began to scream.
A round whizzed over Clem’s head while another struck the brick wall to his front. With no need for instructions, he pulled the rifle into his shoulder and began firing on targets, picking those with automatic weapons first.
Masterson’s machine gun let loose at the same time as the overhead doors began screeching open. The first of the trucks racing forward, Masterson changed the angle of his fire just enough to allow the vehicles to move through the wall of lead he was providing.
The convoy was taking heavy fire. Clem laid down his rifle and rolled to his side, lighting the fire bombs and tossing them in rapid succession to his left and right, trying to create a gauntlet of flames for the vehicles to race down.
Clem watched in horror as the Deltas on the ground began ignoring them. Instead, The Darkness focused all of their fire on the escaping vehicles. A gray cargo van took heavy fire, rounds drumming across its front. Clem figured the driver must have been killed as he watched the van veer hard, nearly rolling before sliding partially off the asphalt and colliding with a tree just short of the opening to the road. Vehicles behind it slammed to a stop, while some tried to steer right of the disabled van, the back half of it now blocking the road.
A wave of at least ten Deltas emerged from the trees, screaming as they charged forward at the van. Clem went back to the weapon, his bolt-action rifle not able to keep up with the mobs. The things reached the van door and began grabbing at the woman and children inside. He no longer had a safe shot and was forced to get off target. He switched his aim in an attempt to support the other vehicles and watched as women exited with weapons in hand, fighting bravely while trying to cover the others as they escaped.
Masterson stayed on the machine gun, screaming as he fired, bringing his aim in as close to the women on the ground as he safely could. “Oh my god, here they come!” he shouted. Clem gaped dow
n and saw the first of the red-sleeved soldiers appear in the tree line, their vehicles just becoming visible in the distant trees. The Deltas were handing off their captives to them. Looking down, Clem could see some of the armed women were falling to the heavy fire, while others were retreating back to the warehouse. He clenched his teeth and looked away from the carnage below, instead focusing on the red-sleeved soldiers standing to his front.
Clem’s guts ached and his throat constricted as he realized they’d failed. This was a fight he knew he couldn’t win. He pushed away the dread and steadied his aim, firing a shot directly into a creature’s chest. He worked the bolt, loading another .308 round and took down another creature before the first had even fallen. A blue splash of plasma erupted to his right, and he felt the heat on his cheek. Ignoring the pain, he reloaded and dropped another of the alien soldiers.
“Clem, we need to move!” Masterson yelled.
He loaded another round and panned left. Having dropped the first group of alien soldiers, he searched the tree line for more. An enemy squad was kneeling in the trees. He locked onto one and saw he was looking down the barrel of an enemy rifle… they fired at the same time. He watched the soldier’s helmeted head snap back from his round as the bolt of blue plasma raced in his direction. With a yank at his boot, Clem was jerked away. He felt himself being dragged across the roof just as the knee wall to his front exploded.
He rolled to his back and looked into the tired face of Masterson. “I said we have to move! There’s nothing else we can do here,” his friend yelled.
“No, I won’t leave!” Clem protested over the sounds of screaming children below. He tried to roll back to his belly and return to the wall. He knew the fight was over, that the Deltas were taking them all away, but he would do whatever he could to stop it.
Masterson low-crawled to his side and, pushing his face in close, said, “We can’t help them if we’re dead.”
