Chapter Eight
“You’re bringing that thing, here?” Mia demanded. Keith stood in front of the window with his hands on his hips. Much of the snow had melted, soaking the ground like a messy slush of dirty water.
“Yes, hunny. This is a very unique situation. You’ve seen the news.”
“I know, but isn’t there some secret hideout you guys can go to other than Dad’s ranch?”
“We’re fresh out of secret hideouts. Lucas only had one and, apparently, it wasn’t so secret.”
“This is awfully close to home, Keith. I saw what it did on the news. If that thing goes crazy here, we’ll lose the town, our home. We don’t have an army or air force here.”
“Not that it would matter,” Keith mumbled. “The good thing is its twenty-seven miles away from our town. Hopefully, if things go bad, it’ll be too boring to draw its attention. Maybe it’ll just leave here and go after some larger city,” Keith said.
“Hopefully? Oh, my God!” Mia paced back and forth, pulling her hair back. She sighed loudly, staring at the ceiling. “I knew, I just knew when I married you that you had baggage. You told me about it, but this is insane,” she said.
“Can’t say I saw this coming,” Keith replied.
She stopped on a dime, staring a hole through him. “Did you turn on the news this morning?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did you watch it in augmented reality?” she asked.
“Not yet. I need to get my mind ready to see it.”
“What’s the toll up to now?”
“About six hundred thousand dead.” Keith walked toward the couch and plopped down. “Trillions in damage in Arizona and New Mexico.”
“That’s my issue. When you activate this device, what happens to the areas in-between, on its way up here? It just plows through all those states?” she asked.
“I’m hoping not. It’ll probably get here in minutes, if I were to guess, maybe even seconds,” he replied.
“Okay, I’m just a high school history teacher so explain this to me. Your ECHO, how can you be certain he can activate the device?”
“Because I translated the instructions when I worked for Lucas after the ECHO project.”
“But he’s never turned it on?”
“No, but I did. I used the exact materials Michael is made of. On accident, I built a makeshift glove using some of the materials we had recovered.”
“Wait, you turned it on, Keith? Why?”
“I was tasked by Lucas to see what the machine was capable of. I had no idea, until we had a power surge at the facilities, that all the systems went haywire and it was on less than a second. I quickly shut it down so most everyone at Lucas’ thought it was a freak power failure. There was an investigation, but I kept my mouth shut.”
Mia’s eyes opened wide. “Wait, so you’re saying all this is because of your accident?” She gestured outside.
“Well, yeah, if you want to look at it that way, it’s probably my fault.” Keith stared a thousand miles away.
Mia stepped close to him. “No, no, I’m not going there. If it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else though, eventually.” She comforted him.
Keith opened a small container on his coffee table. “Maybe.”
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He began to insert a set of contact lenses. “I’m going in, to see it for myself.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I want to see what we’re up against, Mia. Just for a few minutes,” Keith said
“This is dangerous, Keith. People have heart attacks watching these,” she said.
“HoloFeed, boot up BBC live, war correspondent ground level,” he directed as a set of four lights on each wall flickered.
“I don’t want to be around you while this is going on. I’ll be upstairs,” she said, strapping a wristband around him and stepping away.
“Hey!” He glanced down.
“I can’t stop you, but don’t you dare take that wristband off. At least I can monitor your vitals from my phone. I don’t trust those things, Keith, you know that. It’s too real!”
Keith dipped his head for a moment as a menu screen appeared in front of him. “I have to see it,” he whispered.
“You’re stubborn.” She stormed off.
“WARNING – WARNING - KEITH SANDERS, THE VIDEO YOU ARE ABOUT TO VIEW COULD CONTAIN CONTENT NOT SUITABLE FOR YOUNGER VIEWERS. THIS FEED IS A LIVE PROJECTION OF THE BATTLEFIELD MOUNTED TO A WAR REPORTER’S HELMET.
THE IMAGES COULD POTENTIALLY RESULT IN INJURY OR DEATH TO YOUR PERSON DUE TO YOUR BRAIN’S INABILITY TO DISCERN A REAL THREAT FROM A DISTANT THREAT.
PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT BY CONFIRMING THIS VOICE ACTIVATION PROMPT WITH AN ANSWER OF ‘YES’ YOU FULLY ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY TO ANY INJURIES THAT MIGHT OCCUR. DO YOU WISH TO PROCEED?” The computer prompted.
“Um, yes,” Keith said, standing, placing a set of headphones over his ears.
“VOICE RECOGNITION CONFIRMED - TRANSPORTING TO PHOENIX, ARIZONA. WAR REPORTER MATTHEW J. LANG, BBC.
3…
2…
1…
Keith’s living room began to transform into a mass of fuzzy pixelation as the virtual reality feed booted up. It crept down the ceiling and walls like a digitalized virus until the entire room was unrecognizable. The appearance was similar to the static on a TV channel with no signal. The image began to stabilize as audio chimed in first when a group of hybrid diesel engines was heard idling. “Watch out for the civilians!” a soldier yelled.
The image loaded into a crystal clear one-to-one feed of a tank battalion moving down interstate 10, navigating through a line of abandoned cars. Above were two sets of sky loops, frictionless electromagnetic levitating tunnels with tubes that traveled a blistering five hundred miles an hour.
It was eerily silent, absent of horns blowing and tires searing across the hot asphalt. Keith turned back, observing a column of about four hundred tanks behind him, then up and down as helicopters and drones flittered high in the atmosphere. “Oh, my God,” he said.
Keith’s perspective was riding atop one of the tanks as it pushed forward. He was in the assault.
“For those of you just joining us, not ten miles from here, that way, is ground zero!” Lang yelled in an Aussie accent, pointing ahead.
Other than the overdeveloped foreground cityscape, the distant imagery was not unlike the oil field burnings of the Iraq war in 1991, flat brown landscapes with plumes of black rolling clouds mixed with fiery orbs. Sparks filled the air as the light breeze wisped them around erratically.
“I can almost smell the fumes,” Keith whispered, flaring his nostrils.
Lang pointed to the fires. “The Russian drone seems to be attacking military and industrial sites—”
“Russians? Is that really the best they can come up with?” Keith mumbled.
“The 1st Army is confident we can keep it out of the city. They’ve been firing plasma artillery and tank volleys with some degree of effectiveness but, shockingly, it seems that old-fashion projectiles, bullets, shells, artillery are the only ammunition that slow the drone. Some speculate the reason is the impact from older weapons could be why, so they’re going with that,” Lang explained.
“Isn’t that the plan, Sergeant Tiller?” Lang asked the tanker to his right with the hatch open.
Keith panned over the sergeant, staring out into the blackness. He was a mid-twenties black man, wearing tinted goggles that betrayed his distant gaze. He was chewing gum slowly with his forearm resting on the top-mounted machine gun. “Yeah, I guess,” he replied in a dismissive tone.
“You were with one of the tank battalions just as it entered Arizona. What can you tell us about it? It seems its motives are purely destructive with no demands,” Lang asked.
Tiller scratched his cheek and shook his head, then turned his back to the reporter. Lang took the microphone away from Tiller. “As you can see, morale is a bit
shaken. These men have lost an unbelievable amount in just a few hours.” Lang leaned away from Tiller, lowering his voice.
Lang’s tank stopped as the tanker ahead of them gestured ahead. “Watch your fire!” he yelled.
A mob of civilians ran alongside the freeway. Most of them were covered in sweat from 101-degree heat, some were holding children. One Hispanic lady in tears held a toddler that appeared deceased or unconscious. A man beside her attempted to help her along, but she refused, batting him away with her arms.
“Help us! W-we got lots of children, women here.” A desperate middle-aged man in business casual broke off from the group.
The lead tanker ignored his request, glaring straight ahead. “Stand to the side of the freeway, sir. Form a single file line. We have to put these tanks between you and it! That’s my job! And the quicker we can get around you, the better!” he yelled. The tanks eased into the emergency lane between the mob and the traffic jam of abandoned cars. The line of people ahead seemed to stretch for miles. Some of them splintered from the group in panic while others stayed inside their cars with the air conditioning.
“Geez, get out of your cars, people,” Keith said.
“Target left!” the leader tank’s spotter yelled. The tank’s turret swiveled as Keith peered into the blackness.
“Uh-oh,” Lang said, focusing on deep breaths.
“Where?” another tank gunner shouted.
Suddenly, the Omega darted through the smoke. It floated through the air. “There!” Several tanks fired at once, shaking the ground and ejecting dust particles into the air. People near the tank screamed, holding their ears as some were knocked down by the shockwave from the tank’s discharge. A human stampede erupted as the formation of stragglers scattered into a panic. Several people were knocked over and trampled in their terror.
The Omega burst back and forth, strafing through the landscape as 120mm tank rounds zipped all around it. One round was a direct hit on the Omega but a spiderweb of red electricity absorbed the blast. The kinetic force from the impact spun the Omega completely around, knocking it down.
It quickly rose, using its tentacles to spring from the ground as it approached the mass of people. It stopped, tilting its head toward the panicking pack of civilians. Its metallic headdress began to pulse red as the people were lifted from the ground, thousands of them shrieking in terror as they were pulled toward the Omega’s telekinetic grasp. They swirled through the air as if a tornado sucked them in.
The Omega's spiny fingers curled in as the mass of people were pulled toward him. It appeared as if he had full control of each individual’s independent trajectory. “H-hold your fire!” the lead tanker yelled, but the order seemed to go unheard in the panic.
As tank rounds lobbed toward the Omega, it packed the crowd of bodies together tight. The sound of a million bones snapping rang out as it created a shield of flesh and bone thirty feet thick and four dozen feet tall. One round impacted near the center as a giant plume of red mist wisped into the air.
Two gunships helicopters dove north of the tank battalion. The gunships unloaded dozens of rockets as the Omega swatted the projectiles away with its human shield. Both helicopters immediately gained altitude after dumping their payloads, one of them dipping too low.
The Omega gestured its free hand toward the gunship, twisting its wrist. The pilot was ripped through the cockpit glass. The chopper’s onboard artificial intelligence took over, gaining as much altitude as possible. The Omega closed its fist, then opened its hand, slinging the pilot at a hundred miles an hour into the chopper, destroying one of the blades. The gunship quickly dropped altitude and crashed into an apartment building in a fiery blaze.
“My God,” Keith said.
The Omega began to alter its shield of flesh and bone. It morphed into a long spear-like object nearly three hundred feet long. The spear hovered above the Omega, bouncing up and down, aimed down at the tanks.
The Omega seemed to squeeze the spear using his mind. The weapon vibrated, creating the sound of a thousand screeching car brakes. Soft organic tissue and blood oozed from the weapon, creating a more dense, bony projectile.
“No, no, no, no!” Lang yelled.
The Omega flicked its finger as the massive human javelin of bone crashed into the tank next to Lang, exploding on impact. The force blasted Lang off his tank. He tumbled along the ground as automated stabilizers blurred the virtual reality projection to prevent Keith from getting nauseated.
Lang peered toward the tank. Nothing was left of it except a giant mass of burning scrap. Dust filled the air, making it impossible to see more than seventy feet. Keith began to pant as silence ensued. There were no more tanks firing, soldiers or civilians yelling, just the sound of dust whirling around him.
A cyclone of debris and dirt engulfed Lang. “If anyone is still tuning in, it-it appears the creature is creating some type of vortex!” Lang yelled over the howling winds.
He covered his eyes from all the debris as it pelted him. “Aargh. It seems I’ve misplaced my goggles, and my right leg appears to be broken, but I’ll transmit the feed as long as possible,” he said as the chaotic winds intensified, sucking up small scraps from the tank.
Lang was in the eye of the cyclone, and it was anything but calm. He was unable to see anything outside of the brown wall of wind that surrounded him. Just ahead, two glowing red orbs peeked through the column of dust. Lang scooted backward as the Omega’s tentacles poked through, unaffected by the violent winds.
The Omega drifted through dust, staring down at Lang. The camera feed began to pulse up and down as Lang’s breathing accelerated. The Omega took a quick glance at the tank he’d destroyed, then back at Lang.
“They can see you, can they?” it asked as a tentacle stretched toward Lang’s helmet. The stiff metallic-coned end tapped the camera mounted atop Lang’s head.
“W-what? Yes. Yes! D-do you have anything you’d like to say? Why are you doing this?” Lang struggled to sit up.
The Omega glared into the cyclone as the winds calmed slightly. “I do have something to say.” It paused, landing right in front of Lang.
Keith closed his eyes for a moment. “Ah, I don’t think I can watch this.” He attempted to summon the strength to reopen his eyes.
“Firstly, I’m not of this world. Whatever propaganda your government has fabricated about Russia, while effective to some, is false.”
“Uh, wha— I don’t— You’re not Russian?” Lang asked.
“Far from it. Your species is at least forty thousand years from anything remotely similar to myself. I have the means to destroy you if I so choose. It just so happens that terrorism is something you respond to, a slow infectious fear that begins with the delusion that this will not reach your doorstep. Understand that I cannot be stopped, and the rate at which I destroy will only accelerate from this point.”
“W-what— What do you want?” Lang asked.
“If you can hear me, Colonel Ritter, I suggest you return what belongs to me or more blood will be on your hands,” the Omega demanded.
“What belongs to y-you?” Lang asked.
“Colonel Ritter, return what is mine,” the Omega repeated, glancing around him as the storm subsided. Debris rained from the sky as the Omega created a shield around itself. As rubble pummeled Lang, he screamed as he was beaten to death.
“Off! Turn off the feed!” Keith yelled, pulling his hair back. The feed slowly faded into his living room as Mia ran downstairs.
“What?” she asked.
“I have to call Michael and Vala. Wherever they are, they need to hurry.”
Chapter Nine
“How much longer?” Iris asked from the backseat.
“About three minutes. Almost there,” Michael replied.
“There’s nothing out here but melted snow, and it’s really flat,” Iris said.
“We’ve never been to Minnesota either, but yeah, it looks pretty boring,” Vala said.
“B
oring? I think that’s the point. The less attention, the better.” Michael gazed out at the pastures. “I’ve heard there’s a lot of hills in other parts of the state. It’s not all flat like this.”
“Why are we here, again?” Iris asked.
“Kind of a road trip, but we’re stopping to see some friends while we’re here. We won’t be here long, right, Mike?”
“Uh, no, I don’t think so.” He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel.
“Good,” Vala said.
Michael slowed to take a right turn. “This road will take us straight there,” he said.
Vala gazed over at Michael as the early morning sunlight gleamed on his face. “Excited to see your buddy?” She cracked a smile.
Michael slowly turned toward Vala. “Sort of. What about you?”
“I’m neutral, really. I just want this over with,” she said. Michael braked, observing an old, white, two-story farmhouse in the distance with a wraparound porch.
“That’s the place?” She gestured toward it.
“Yeah.”
“Looks pretty old,” Vala observed. The paint was chipping on the house and the wooden fence posts that surrounded the yard seemed rotten and had fallen over in places, either by animals running through it or from age.
“Do they have any animals? I love animals!” Iris laughed.
“Not sure about that, Iris. Probably not anymore.” Michael zoomed in, examining one of the porch columns that had a worn American flag stirring in the wind. Its red had faded to pink and the fabric was frayed. Beside it was an old, red barn with a giant hole in the roof. Inside the barn was a black, 1980s Chevrolet Silverado step-side truck. It appeared to be in good shape, possibly restored or well maintained.
“Did they get a lot of radiation here from the bombs?” Vala asked.
“Very little, best I remember,” Michael replied. In front of the house was a black Humvee and another pickup, a newer blue Ford. As Michael turned in the driveway, his Audi’s tires crumbled through the muddy, snowy path, dipping into the ruts as he crept forward in all-wheel drive.
A man exited the house in a red and navy-blue flannel shirt. He had long white hair on top that tapered down around the sides and a thick beard. He walked with a bit of a limp, and his arm was in a sling. He braced himself along the railing, staring out at them.
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