EARTH'S LAST WAR (CHILDREN OF DESTINY Book 1)

by Glenn Van Dyke

  Even as he sent the spider sprawling, hitting it with the butt of his flamethrower and then finishing it off with a stream of plasma, the blood vessels in his eyes had already begun to grow and extend.

  He had never personally witnessed the rage, but he had heard about it from others who had. His mind raced, trying to separate fact from fiction, fear from hope—he realized just how little he knew. However, there was one inescapable fact—the rage was always fatal.

  The spot where the spider had bitten him was already growing numb, unresponsive.

  Before him, coming at him from all directions were twenty or more spiders. With a quick glance at Stratton and Martinez who were standing in the doorway, his situation became instantly worse. They were staring wide-mouthed at something high above him.

  Looking up, Cole slowly hobbled round to see a spider more than twenty meters tall. It was like the others in appearance, just ten times bigger. He staggered back a step, half in shock from the sheer size of the thing and half because of the painful venom in his right leg. “Gena, all systems to maximum,” he managed to say, just as the spider flipped him high into the air with a swipe of its front leg. Though his inertia dampener was at maximum, he landed hard against the glowing crystalline wall of webs, where he then fell to the ground, far below. The spiders around him skittered away, making room for their queen.

  Letting out a heavy sigh, he rolled over onto his back. Looking up, he saw that the spider was already atop him. It reared back on its hind legs and as if it were already declaring victory, let out a long roaring shriek that was deafening. Weakened portions of the crystalline cavern fell, unable to withstand the percussive noise.

  Lunging, the spider grasped him between its fangs, tossing him into the air. It just as quickly caught him, almost as though it were playing with him. Even with the armor’s dampening field, the pressure the spider was exerting, registered over 630 kilos per square inch. Though he could barely breathe, he began attacking the rock-hard fangs, throwing an endless flurry of heavy servo-assisted punches. Slowly, the fangs began to show signs of cracking, fracturing.

  Martinez, helpless to assist Cole without endangering him further, stood in the doorway, incinerating all periphery spiders until his tank sputtered and the flame died.

  Beginning to feel the damage of Cole’s blows, the spider spewed venom all over Cole, hoping to immobilize him.

  “I’m not dead yet you bitch!

  Gena, fire turrets!” Instantly, a pair of small shoulder turrets unfurled and unloaded sixty-four hundred rounds of armor piercing, explosive tipped, micro-needles. The spider shrieked as the needles tore through its internal organs, blowing large exit holes out its backside.

  The west end of the cavern blew outwards as hundreds of unobstructed micro-needles exited the shredding spider and struck the webbing beyond, opening a large hole.

  The spiders who had been advancing on the web, along with thousands of shattered crystalline shards were sucked up, swept away by the monstrous tornado that was bearing down on them. The display of raw energy within the tornado dwarfed the largest of Kansas twisters.

  Thrashing violently in the throes of death, the spider dropped Cole from its grasp. It tottered precariously above him, staggered and then collapsed to the ground. With a few lingering twitches, it released a last exhale of breath.

  Throngs of spiders watching the battle were stilled, seemingly shocked by what they had witnessed. As the death of their mother and queen settled in, a feeling of vengeance seemed to permeate the air.

  Behind Cole, the cavern’s already weakened structure began to disintegrate as chunks were ripped away by the charcoal-brown tornado. The noise was deafening and even as the world the spiders had built was disappearing around them, their attentions remained solely focused on Cole. He lay on the ground before them, unable to escape. As one, they moved with lightning speed, swarming over him.

  With a final glance at Stratton, Cole’s blood red eyes and a nod, told Stratton what he had to do.

  Cole screamed, not the scream of a man in pain, but the gutsy scream of a man that was refusing to die easily.

  Pulling Martinez inside, Stratton grabbed the door and slammed it shut, pinching the armored leg of a spider that had almost managed to make it inside. The leg shook wildly and then went limp. The spider had bitten it off, freeing itself.

  In direct contrast to the cacophony of noises outside, with the doors closure everything went eerily silent, leaving them with only the sound of their own breathing.

  “Cole’s still out there,” shouted Martinez as he reached for the handle of the door.

  Shoving Martinez hard into the wall, “No, he’s not, he’s dead!” Their eyes locked, the faceplates of their helmets pressed together. “He was bitten! He has the rage. He’s not human anymore!” The image branded into Stratton’s mind was terrifying. He hadn’t seen Cole get bitten and it had taken him a moment to accept that what he saw was real. Cole was a close friend and the look in his eyes conveyed a flood of emotions. In a single glance, Cole had asked for compassion, for understanding, and yet, it was one of compulsion, of hunger. A look of rage.

  The whites of Cole’s eyes were a solid mass of red corpuscles, his face a roadmap of veins that pulsed on the surface of his skin. His bared teeth were drenched in the blood of his own bleeding gums.

  A single drop of spider venom stole much more than its victim’s life. It stole their humanity, their ability to think and reason. In the days that led up to their death, the victim had nothing more than a hungering for flesh and blood.

  Martinez, tears filling his eyes, spun out of Stratton’s grip and walked into the far corner of the room where he fell to his knees.

  ***

  “Gena, detonate my energy core!” said Cole. The words were inhuman, gnarled into something barely recognizable. There was no mistake but that Cole had spoken them. It was Cole’s last gift to them.

  The team then heard Gena’s reply. “Voice print not recognized.”

  “Why is he trying to blow us all up?” asked Martinez.

  “He isn’t. He’s trying to save us,” said Stratton. “He just isn’t thinking clearly.”

  The next sounds they heard were nothing more than growls, inhuman screams that sent shivers down their spine.

  “Gena, disconnect Cole from the team’s comm feed,” ordered Stratton, silencing Cole’s garbled screams. “All right everyone. We need to regroup!

  Martinez, Moore, we need to find the Admiral. I don’t know why Paris, Tomlinson and Hitch aren’t here, but they must have gone to look for him.

  Moore, grab the bag of replacement energy cores.

  Doc, get ready. I think you’re going to have a few patients.”

  They found Tomlinson, holding Paris in his arms, both of them collapsed on the third landing down, barely alive. The footprints on the stairs implied that they had been on their way up when they’d lost power. Their breaths were shallow, their faces white and showing signs of frostbite.

  “Replace their energy cores. It’ll give them heat and oxygen while we keep searching for Hitch and the Admiral.”

  Hitch, they found at the mid-point of the sixth flight of stairs, not breathing.

  After replacing Hitch’s core, “Get her and the others upstairs to the doc, I’ll go look for Steven,” said Stratton. “If I need help, I’ll call,” Grabbing the last spare core from Moore he continued down the stairs.

  Stepping out upon the main floor, he found the room’s large size to be daunting, its darkness impenetrable. He dared not walk far from the stairs, for fear of losing his bearings. Four minutes later Stratton was forced to replace his own frozen energy core with the spare he had brought along. Getting no reply to his calls, he grew resolute to what the silence inferred. “Dammit Steven, where the hell are you!”

  As his replacement core began to grow low on power, he reluctantly turned round to leave. Though Steven had the physical size and strength of Paul Bunyan and the determination of a R
ottweiler, Stratton knew for a certainty that his friend was dead. The temperature was unbearably cold. Given the condition of the ruptured coolant lines, it had been an impossible task.

  The trek back up the stairs was arduous and his heavy heart made it feel longer than it was. It would be his responsibility to tell Steven’s wife and children what had happened. His heart broke for them.

  Entering the room upstairs, Stratton found the team hard at work on Hitch. Martinez had removed her armor and torn her cotton undergarment open down the middle. Victor punched a long needle into her heart. A moment later, Victor called, “Clear!” Placing the paddles atop her bare chest, he shocked her heart. “Come-on, don’t you quit on me, Hitch. Don’t quit!”

  Stratton set his helmet down on the floor as the others had done, giving the doctor light. Stratton then said three quick prayers, one for Cole, one for Hitch and one for Steven.

  Even as the fourth jolt of electricity raced through Hitch, Stratton looked round the room at the team. Paris was sitting next to Tomlinson and they were holding hands. They met Stratton’s gaze and gave him a small nod, a silent thank you for rescuing them. In their eyes, Stratton saw the sorrow they felt over the loss of their friend and Commander.

  “Dammit Hitch, come-on!” A brief second after the fifth snap of the paddles sounded, they all heard a small beep. “We got her—for the moment anyway. We need to get her back to Sea Base, Stratt. She needs the regenerator,” said Victor.

  “I’m afraid we aren’t going anywhere, doc. The storm is on top of us,” reminded Stratton. “Robbie can’t bring the Dolphin down in these conditions.”

  “Without Sea Base’s regenerator, she doesn’t have very long. Her vitals are barely registering. It’s going to be hard enough just keeping her alive on the ride home,” said Victor.

  Stratton threw a glance at the others in the room, his mind trying to find a solution. Maybe Cole was right!

  “Robbie, you still in the area?” said Stratton.

  “I’m still here!”

  “Get ready to pick us up!”

  “Apologies, sir, but there’s no way I can land in this! Wind speed is 310 knots. Transports aren’t built for that kind of turbulence. Not to mention that last I saw, there was a swarm of spiders all over you guys.”

  “There won’t be any wind—or spiders! I’m going to detonate Cole’s energy core. Get clear of the blast area. Return the first moment you deem it’s safe to pick us up.”

  “The core will blow our asses into a million pieces,” said Martinez.

  Ignoring Martinez, Stratton ran his fingers over the heavy security door. He remembered the scratches of the spiders’ assault upon the door, the building. It had barely been marred. Retrieving the scanner out of Tomlinson’s pack, he scanned the building’s material composition.

  Similar to their armor, the door and walls were composed from the same variety of rare metals; however, it also had 12 percent of a foreign, unknown compound. Whatever the ingredient was, he knew it was the reason why the spiders had not been able to breach the building. Moreover, after seeing the depth to which Tynabo had gone to protect his work, it didn’t surprise him.

  “Transport clear,” said Robbie.

  “Doc, get Hitch suited and prepped to move. We’re taking her home!”

  “As a ghost. We’re all going to be vaporized,” said Martinez.

  “This isn’t a college debating class, Martinez. I’m the ranking officer. So stow it! At the very least, we’ll take all the creepy-crawlies with us.

  Everyone get your helmets on. Take cover in the corners. When it’s over, help the doc move Hitch to the transport. Martinez, increase the size of your dampening field to cover the doc. Shield him with your armor.” Victor was the only one in the group who wasn’t wearing armor.

  The team took cover in the corners of the room as Stratton had suggested. Verifying that they were ready, Stratton then gave Gena the command code to overload the core in Cole’s armor.

  Outside the building, above the boisterous rumbles of the storm and the clacking of the spiders, the shrill shriek of Cole’s overloading fusion reactor began to grow louder.

  Inside, they waited anxiously; knowing what was coming, but not sure of their own outcome.

  Suddenly, the silence in the room was broken by the sound of a sheet of paper being slowly, ripped. Their gaze was drawn to the hallway entry, where they saw Ashlyn—Steven draped atop her back. She was fully nude, her skin glistening white from a layer of light frost.

  Seeing her standing there, Stratt recalled Dr. Takamura’s prophetic words about Pandora. “It is said that when she returns, she would rise from the earth, her hands raised above her head in epiphany, and that she would be the giver of gifts unto men.”

  It wasn’t until Ashlyn took another step forward and they again heard the sound of ripping paper that they understood the source of the noise. In the hallway behind her, lay a trail of bloodied footprints—in each, clumps of her own pulpy flesh were frozen to the ice. She had made the trek, knowing that with each step, she would have to endure the pain of pulling her foot free, ripping away ever-deeper layers of flesh and muscle tissue.

  So incredulous was the sight of Ashlyn with Steven upon her back that it was hard to accept it as reality, and for a scant few seconds it kept them from moving to help her. Seeing Ashlyn carrying Steven at the top of the stairs would be something they would never forget.

  As Ashlyn bent to set Steven down, her strength failed her. Stratt, who had risen first, arrived just as Ashlyn collapsed unconscious to the floor—Tomlinson right behind him.

  At that same moment, thirty-five meters up the street, Cole’s fusion reactor exploded.

  Forty klicks out, hovering high in the atmosphere, Robbie watched the blast. Everything within two kilometers, vaporized instantly. Beyond that, millions of projectiles created by the blast shredded even distant buildings on the outskirts of Denver. The once bustling city was now and forever, gone. What little was left, crumbled before the eight hundred kilometer per hour blast wave.

  Robbie watched in awe, as a mushroom-cloud rose into the stratosphere. Starving trails of fire chased the fleeing oxygen, clinging vainly to a last breath of life.

  As Stratton had assumed, the blast blew the tornado and the storm front apart, ripping the heart out of it.

  To the team, even through the sound dampening walls, it sounded like the world was ending. The roar from the blast was ear shattering.

  The building shook violently. The ceiling panels and overhead lights fell. The cabinets, chairs and desks in the room turned into volatile projectiles, bounding off the walls and into each other. Everything shattered.

  Paris watched as a heavy desk was thrown across the room, where it slammed into the two frozen bodies of Tynabo and his wife. Their frozen bodies exploded into hundreds of tiny pieces.

  Huddled in a corner, Paris’ eyes went wide as a shattered hand with only a single, extended middle finger landed inches from her. Inside, she chuckled, wondering if the gods were trying to tell her, “Your’e screwed!” But her quirky smile was quickly quelled as half an eyeball and a frozen piece of jawbone with teeth fell beside it—making her want to retch.

  The same splintering desk then rebounded, slamming itself into Moore, breaking his hip.

  “Fuck me!” Moore screamed, as much at himself as it was a reaction to the pain, for he had forgotten to turn on his suit’s dampening field. Paris reached out to help, but missed as Moore flailed away from her. Trying a second time, she grabbed his outstretched hand, pulling him into the corner with her. With the ferocious tug, Moore again screamed out as his wrist snapped.

  Stratton, thrown against the far wall, landed on his back, face up. With the ceiling panels gone, the light from his helmet settled upon a heavy, solid-metal girder swaying precariously above Ashlyn, its weld joint broken. In the blink of an eye, with his suit’s servo assist, he launched himself through the air. In one quick motion, he grasped Ashlyn round the waist
as he flew over her, carrying her like a limp rag-doll into the far corner. The jagged steel point of the beam came crashing down, spearing the just vacated flooring where Ashlyn had been lying. Stratton ordered Gena to enlarge the circumference of his suit’s dampening field, encapsulating her, his body shielding her.

  Tomlinson had gone to Steven, encapsulating him within his own shield, protectively covering him.

  It was near another minute before the worst of the shaking began to subside. The room was a snow covered, littered battlefield.

  Martinez and Victor, extricating themselves from beneath a heavy pile of snow that had found its way into their corner, were the first to move. Victor may have been a fearful man, but he was also a damned good doctor. Retrieving a heated, thermal blanket from his duffle bag of supplies, he brought it to Ashlyn and spread it on the icy ground. Stratton then gently laid her atop it, and folded it over her. While scanning her vitals, “Martinez, Moore, get Steven’s suit off. Get him ready for the paddles; I’ll be there in a sec.”

  “No can-do, doc. My hip is broken,” groaned Moore. Adding, “Not to mention my wrist,” as he shot Paris a disgruntled scowl.

  “Don’t scowl at me, rookie. That was your own damned fault. I’ll help Martinez, doc,” Paris offered.

  Victor gave no reply as he continued analyzing Ashlyn’s data, “Why she’s still alive, I have no idea. I’ve never seen such vast amounts of cellular and internal organ damage in a living person. Her core body temperature is way below the minimum threshold. She should be dead. I guess, for now, just keep her warm until I’m done with Steven.”

  Victor then joined the others who were prepping Steven.

  Stratton held Ashlyn in his arms, protectively coddling her—trying to keep the blanket tight around her. He had noted the missing patches of flesh from her exposed shins, elbows, arms and hands. The flayed skin made it painfully obvious that she had fallen several times on her way up.

  It was easy to see that her face and body were perfection personified, her waist length, black hair neatly tied into a ponytail that lay about her neck. Just beneath it, the glint off her silver locket, attached to a necklace caught Stratton’s attention. Its center blue-gem had begun to glow, emanating with flowing, swirling energy.