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Page 34
“BOOM!” the big .50 caliber fired again. This time she’d seen a monster crawling over its dead brethren to get at the humans. It was a race against time. The exhausted humans versus the unending hunger of the alien predators.
“We need more batteries,” Wilson said.
“It’s four bloody miles each way to Ft. Eden,” Edwin reminded him. His rifle was under a tarp next to the wall, serving as a second line of defense. The men carried their M4 carbines as well, but those were the least effective weapons against their adversaries. “But you’re quite right, Colonel, I fear we’ll be overrun before we can complete this fortification without those batteries.”
“I’ll go,” Lisa volunteered. “My arms are jelly.” Wilson considered for a second before nodding.
“Very well, but make haste, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir!” she said. Lisa trotted over to the logging team, grabbed the used batteries which were stacked in a dry place under a deadfall, took the two off the chainsaws, and set off slipping, sliding, and squelching through the mud. She hadn’t jogged half a mile before she heard the .50 caliber thunder again. The sound helped her stick to her blistering pace. They’d been at the barrier for days, and she’d had next to no sleep in that period. It reminded her of her time in Ranger school, non-stop work, stress, and simulated life-and-death situations. This time, they weren’t simulations.
She reached Ft. Eden in 25 minutes, or 6 minutes and 15 seconds per mile. Her pace in Ranger school had been just under 5 minutes, with a full pack. She was only carrying her M4 carbine, battle-rattle, and a small backpack. That pace would have gotten her a down check, and she admonished herself.
Seeing the little camp empty was unsettling. It had grown considerably in their weeks on Bellatrix. They now had five little cabins, a cooking lean-to, a semi-permanent solar shower, and a pair of half-buried storage shelters. She looked longingly at the solar shower. Being a woman in a combat arm offered some particularly annoying challenges. The distant echo of a booming .50 caliber round reminded her that she didn’t have time for luxuries.
Lisa trotted over to the polyester shelter used to house the electronics for the bank of self-aiming solar panels. She unzipped the flap and stuck her head in. Even with the overcast and constant rain, the charging system showed 44% output. There were six universal 40-volt mil-spec chargers sitting there. She swapped the dead batteries for the good ones, making sure each charger locked in place and flashed red to indicate it was charging properly, before zipping the flap back up and heading back to the worksite. She only made it a few steps before she stopped and changed course to one of their stores. Inside, she located a box of MRE sandwiches and stuffed them in her pack. There’d been little time to eat in the last few days, and cold traditional MREs were nearly inedible. Then, she was off again.
The run back to the worksite was just as miserable as the run from it. If anything, it was raining harder. They’d been down the path enough times to completely trample the undergrowth into a root- and rock-strewn, treacherous mess. She thought more than a few drill instructors would gleefully tell her this was why she’d spent countless hours on the confidence course back in Georgetown, Texas. She knew she was going slower, but she had to concentrate on not breaking an ankle or plummeting into a ravine.
They’d used fluorescent spray paint on the trees every 10th of a mile, like they did on freeways back on Earth. She was at 3.5 miles when she heard it, a series of sustained, fully automatic busts followed by a loud, sharp, Krump!
“Claymore!” she spat, and threw herself into the run. The team had a grand total of 12 claymores, and no hope of more. Eight were set in overlapping kill zones around Ft. Eden, and the other four were set up by the unfinished palisade. If they’d set one of those off…
She cleared the last, low hillock, the sound of weapons fire rebounding around the woods, and came to a skidding stop in the mud. The area around the construction site was in complete pandemonium. At least two Kloths had cleared the barricade and were rampaging around the plateau. One roared like a T-rex from a monster movie, lunging and just missing Edwin. The man barely danced clear of the snapping jaws. Spinning around, he shot a pair of huge .455 caliber rounds from his venerable Webley revolver into the beast’s face. It roared in rage and pain, a massive spray of its blood covering a portion of the partially completed palisade.
Lisa unslung her M4, flipped it to burst, and raced down the hill. She didn’t see the third Kloth coming at her until it was too late.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-Six
May 21
Mindy sat up with a start. She was incredibly weak and felt nauseous. What the hell happened, and where the hell was she? The room was dark, lit by a dim light. She had no idea why her head hurt, or why she only wore a t-shirt.
“What’s going on?” she croaked.
“She’s awake,” a feminine voice said nearby. Mindy turned, but couldn’t find the source.
“Who’s there?” she asked, swallowing and coughing. Her throat was so dry and sore!
“It’s Samantha.” Mindy hadn’t recognized the woman’s voice; she sounded like a person who’d been all but destroyed. She heard the other woman draw close and press a water bottle into her hand. Mindy put it to her lips. The water tasted metallic, a sure sign of a chemical sterilization. It was also warm. Mindy heard several others move closer in the near darkness.
“Where am I?” Mindy asked, “And, why is it dark in here?”
“We’re in the Hotel des Artistes,” Samantha said. “There’s no power.”
“And, we don’t want any of the killers to find us,” another woman said. Mindy was sure it was Alexis, another of her friends at the project. Mindy took a second sip of the water, it helped.
“How did I get here? I don’t remember what happened.”
“There was a huge fight. I think the army was fighting someone,” another woman explained. Mindy didn’t recognize the woman, and it confused her. “When the fighting slowed, we looked around. There were bodies everywhere, burning helicopters, and a lot of bleeding and screaming people.” The woman sounded horrified, and Mindy understood why. “A few of us went exploring. Some didn’t come back. Jorge found you in the portal dome. He said that Volant guy was there too, dead. You were lying inside, unconscious.” She tried to remember the last thing she’d been doing, pushing at the wad of cotton balls in her brain, which gave a little.
“I was trying to figure out how to fix the portal,” Mindy said. But she remembered doing that in the bunkhouse, not the portal dome. Someone brought one of the dim lights closer. It threw a circle of illumination no more than 4 or 5 feet, just enough for her to see five female faces. All of them looked haggard. “What do you mean killers?”
“There are bands roaming the city.” Samantha said, “They’re crazy. They’re killing almost everyone they find.”
“I heard they rape the women first,” a girl she didn’t know said.
“I heard they rape them after they kill them,” another said.
“What about the police?” Mindy asked, sitting up slowly. She was on a bed, though a very narrow one. She’d never heard of the Hotel des Artistes before.
“I don’t think there are any left,” Alexis said.
“Have things fallen apart that fast, in just one night?”
“One night?” Samantha asked. “Mindy, you’ve been out for at least four days.” Mindy jerked like she’d been tasered. “We gave you water by squeezing a wet wash cloth into your mouth, but you wouldn’t eat.”
“Four days?” she gasped, and dug into her jeans to pull out her cellphone. It was dead, the battery completely spent. Terrified, she asked, “What day is it?”
“May 21st,” Samantha said, “about one a.m.”
Mindy felt her shoulders sag in shock. May 21st was the day LM-245 was going to hit. It was supposed to happen in about eight hours. Over the next few minutes she got to her feet and moved around. She felt like someone had beaten her
with a rubber hose. Her muscles were slow to respond, and she was dizzy.
Jorge showed up a short time later with several others. They had some food, mostly canned fruit, scrounged from a deli a block away.
“It is dangerous for anyone to move about,” he told her. “It is more dangerous for women. These gangs are insane. When the asteroid appeared, brighter than any star, and the internet did not come back on, everyone seemed to go insane!”
“Not you,” Mindy pointed out, eating a can of pears. She only ate the fruit and didn’t drink the juice, afraid it would upset her stomach. The sugar in the fruit quickly brought her energy back. “Thank you for saving me.”
“Do you know what happened in the dome?” he asked her. Mindy shook her head.
“Last thing I remember I was working on my computer—” She stopped and looked around. “Is my bag here? My Osprey?” Someone brought it to her and, in the dim LED light, she examined its contents. Her computer was gone, but the radio Detective Harper gave her was still there. She clicked it on, and the display showed 25% power remaining.
Mindy regretted not calling him after he’d given her the radio. What good would it do now? Was he still alive? She had a hard time believing he would have abandoned the city to the lunatics. Maybe he’d fled days ago as the wheels were coming off. The portal had seemed like their lifeline. The portal, the portal, the portal, portal, portal…
Images cascaded through her head. Symbols spun and moved, linked, relinked, and morphed into new symbols. They flashed like searing branding irons, iridescent gateways to space and time. She screamed.
“Mindy!” Someone shook her and gently patted her cheek. She struggled to open her eyes. Her head burned as though someone had poured molten lead into her ears. She felt a minor pain in her cheek and wetness dripping down the side of her face.
“I’m here,” she moaned.
“You jerked and fell,” Jorge said from somewhere nearby.
“How long this time?” she asked, certain that was what happened to her before. She remembered everything.
“Maybe five minutes?” Samantha guessed.
“Good,” Mindy said and started to get up.
“Woah,” Alexis said, “you hit your head pretty hard.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said and shook off the hand. “We have to hurry.”
“For what?” Jorge spoke again. “The thing is going to hit in a few hours.”
“I know,” she said, surprisingly stable on her feet. “How many people are here from the project?” The two she could see in the dim light stared at her, uncomprehending. “How many, damn it!” she snapped.
“Uh…” Samantha said, and looked at Jorge, who spoke.
“Twenty, maybe thirty,” he said. “Most are logistics people, truck drivers and equipment handlers. There are also the four of you from the office.”
“How many women?” This time it was Jorge who gawked. Mindy slammed a fist into the wall with an echoing boom. “We don’t have much time! How many fucking women?”
“Counting you, seven or eight. No, nine, one driver got his wife over from Brooklyn somehow.”
“Not enough,” she mused, thinking desperately. The radio was laying on the floor nearby. It must have tumbled out of her hands when she collapsed. The portal, echoed in her mind, and she swayed on her feet. The others looked alarmed. Mindy shook it off and stooped to snatch the radio. He’d said he would check in at noon and nine p.m. It was neither, but if she waited until noon, she had the feeling there wouldn’t be anyone to answer. She checked the function of the radio and pressed the transmit button. “Is anyone there?”
“Who is this?” a voice answered immediately, making her jump.
“Detective Harper?” she asked. It hadn’t sounded like him.
“Harper is gone,” the man replied, and she felt a tiny part of her shrivel and die. “Who is this?” he repeated.
“My name is Mindy Patoy,” she began.
“The astronomer?”
“Yeah,” she said, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice.
“He told me about you. Y’all sure waited until zero hour to give him a call, didn’t you?”
“It’s a long story,” she said with a sigh. The radio beeped, and she looked at the display. It said 2% power remaining, low battery. What the hell, she wondered, it said 25% just a few minutes ago! “Look, the radio is about to die. Get as many people as you can, women especially, to the Sheep Meadow of Central Park. Bring whatever you can carry, and guns. I have a way out, but you must come quickly! Do you understand?” She listened, but there was no reply. She glanced at the display. It was dark. The battery was empty. “Shit,” she said and dropped it onto the bed.
“What do you mean a way out?” Samantha asked, her voice breathless. The others were so quiet, Mindy couldn’t hear them breathing.
“Just what I said, but we need to bring as many people as we can, and move a bunch of stuff from temporary warehouse #2.”
“The park is overrun,” Jorge said. “The gangs found a lot of the guns and stuff the government people left behind after they shot each other to shit. They’ve been shooting up midtown for days.”
“That’s why I called my police friend,” Mindy said. Only she didn’t know if the transmission went through, or if the man she’d talked to would believe her. “Okay,” she said to those in the room with her, “if we stay here, we’re all going to die. LM-245, that shiny asteroid, is a death sentence. We can either sit and wait for the end, or make a play for survival. What do you want to do?”
* * *
Mindy glanced at her watch, salvaged from her bag back in the hotel. The glowing tritium hands (left over from her late-night astronomy days) said 02:02. The city seemed dark and sinister. A few lights were visible in high-rise buildings, though only on the highest floors. Perhaps those were the safest, she thought, high above the city with many stairs to climb. But how were those people staying alive? Someone coughed behind her, and Mindy glanced over her shoulder. It was almost impossible to keep 27 people quiet while moving through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. She turned to Jorge and hissed.
“You have to keep them quiet,” she said.
“I’m trying,” he said. “Some have colds, so it is not easy.” Mindy glanced up, it was threatening to rain. That wouldn’t help keep them quiet, but it might help keep them under cover.
“Okay,” she said. They were just across Central Park West from the famous, and now burned out, Tavern on the Green. Jorge had said it would be a good place to hide, because someone had looted it. The burned-out hulk of a huge tank was half inside the dining area, and a long-dead helicopter was lying on its side a short distance away. Mindy could clearly see bloated corpses littering the once meticulously-manicured lawn, and the smell spoke of many more nearby. The smell reminded her of a country butcher in the summer, back when she was a kid.
The nine women, herself included, were at the center of their group with the men on both ends. None of them had any real weapons, only an assortment of clubs, garden tools, and a couple of machetes. From Jorge’s description of his foraging trips into the city, embellished by others, their weapons would be no match for what they would likely face. Stealth was their only option. Central Park West might have been only two lanes wide, but it looked like a mile for 27 people to cross.
At a signal, the first group of four sprinted across the road. After a minute, to be sure no one had seen them, another four went. Every few seconds, gunshots rang out. They heard a siren, but it only lasted for a minute. Clouds of smoke drifted on the wind, and the moon gave off almost no light through the cloud cover. Another four men made it across, and then it was the women’s turn.
“All of you as one,” Jorge encouraged them, just as they’d discussed before leaving. Mindy checked her backpack and looked to see if any of the others would lead. When no one did, she mumbled something unintelligible under her breath and went at a fast trot. After a moment, she heard the others follow.
The rest of the men crossed the road, and they began moving as a group into the remains of the Tavern on the Green. The opulence was gone forever, replaced with the kind of clutter you saw in video games, or movies. Tables were upside down, and people had used chairs to shatter the huge windows overlooking the park. Empty food cans and rotten food were everywhere. One corner sported an indistinguishable pile that gave off an odor of human waste.
“I don’t want to stay here,” one of the women said. She looked no more than 20 years old, and her eyes were big enough to reflect the tiny amount of light in the restaurant.
“We need to hide here a few minutes while some of Jorge’s men scout ahead,” Mindy explained. Someone set up one of the tiny LED camp lights, so no one could see it from the outside. The faces staring at her were wide with fright and confusion. Mindy didn’t know why she was so calm, she just was. We are, echoed in her mind.
The men who’d left to scout took much longer to return than she’d hoped. Her watch read 02:31 when the first of them arrived, out of breath and as wide eyed as the women.
“There is no one alive in the camp, but many more bodies. There was another fight several days ago.”