by Chris Lowry
Annie went next and followed her into the center of the encampment.
Lt couldn't fit. His armor was too bulky, too wide.
"Try again," the man who met them in the clearing growled and pointed his rifle at Lt.
"You get more flies with honey," Lt said.
He squatted and leaped.
The suitaugmented his strength, the impulses passed from the nanotechnology in his bloodstream to the servomechanisms inside the biomechanical suit.
He landed on top of the twelve foot roof and bounded down into the clearing before anyone on the inside could react.
Lt was surprised no one screamed, though there were a few grunts as the men in the clearing scrambled for their weapons.
He left his blaster strapped to his back.
If they started shooting, he'd pin Annie between his armor and the side of an RV to keep her safe, before he unleashed hell.
But right now, they were aiming. Not shooting.
"You like to make an entrance," Annie said as she moved closer to his side.
"Said the woman who crashed us just to make a point."
"I wasn't making a point," she snarled.
"Exactly," Lt crowed. "You just ain't that good of a flier."
"I am an excellent pilot," she shot back.
"I ain't discounting your abilities. In space," he said.
"We're not done with this," she seethed, but he could see the quirk of a smile at the corner of her mouth and it gave him a tingle.
He had to appreciate someone who could feel humor in the presence of danger. Gallows humor, maybe but fun to find none the less.
"Which one of you sons of bitches is killing women and children?" Lt called out.
One of the RV doors open and Brother James stepped out into the sunlight.
"Greetings," said the man.
He just looked like Brother James, Lt thought. Same body, almost the same face. Not twins though.
"I guess you've met my brother," the man smiled. "I'm Brother John."
"He doesn't look like a killer," said Annie.
Lt glanced around as the men from the clearing filed through the narrow gap between the RV's and fingered their weapons, ready to aim and fire.
"You saying I look like one, Warbucks?" he muttered.
There were at least fifteen guns against them, he counted.
He didn't see a weapon on the man who called himself Brother John, but he could have a pistol hidden on his back.
Myra was off to one side, but still exposed if they started shooting. And fifteen rifles was dangerous enough that Warbucks might get hurt, so he held off.
"I'm saying I guess I expected something different."
"We like our killers ten foot tall," Lt said. "You're kinda short."
John smiled, showing a lot of teeth.
"Is that what he's still saying? I killed people."
Lt shifted.
"He said you killed women and children. I can't let that stand."
The smile faded slightly but was still plastered to his tan face. Wavy hair framed thin cheeks, intelligent eyes sparkled in the afternoon sunlight.
"You don't have to take my word for it," John slapped the side of the RV he came out of.
The door opened, and eight women came out.
"Before you start thinking Lazarus," John said. "They were never dead."
"Well Baptist, I was thinking zombies or maybe vampires on account of some reading I've had the pleasure to enjoy. I don't normally go straight to a biblical reference, unless you're talking horsemen."
"We're not dead," one of the women called out to him. "You can go back and tell him. We're not coming home."
"The children are here too," said Brother John. "And I'm not a Baptist. Another thing my brother and I disagree on."
"I don't give a shit about your religious preferences Baptist. I came to get some revenge for folks you killed. Turned out you didn't kill 'em, you was building a harem. No skin off my nose. But they're going back with me all the same."
"Harem!" John barked. "Is that what you think?"
He circled around the clear space between the RV's and came closer to Lt.
"They're not my wives," he said, lowering his voice. "That's my brother's vision of what the world should be like now. But I'd like to hear about the Suit you're wearing. I haven't seen one before. And just pictures from when I was a kid."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lt opened his mouth to tell the young man he didn’t give a shit about what kind of pictures he looked at when he was a kid.
Could have been the sticky pages of a decade old Playboy stolen from under his dad’s bed, could have been a muscle car mag picked up for a couple of bucks at a corner convenience store along with a cold soda and spicy jerky.
But he didn’t get the chance.
A sentry sprinted from the woods.
“Incoming!” someone screamed.
A man in camouflage rags ran through the trees and darted under the bridge.
Like ants in an anthill that’s been kicked by a child, the other men in the encircled camp scrambled into action.
They darted into the woods, dashed into hollowed out sections of earth under the RV’s, while the girls squeezed through the narrow gap opening and kneeled in the shadow of the concrete, weapons aimed at the clear sky.
John jogged past Lt and Annie.
“Licks,” he said in a simple, matter of fact voice. “Follow me.”
They did as he asked, matching pace as the thin man ran past the group on one side of the bridge and ducked under the steel beam girders on the far side.
“Patrols don’t normally come out this far,” he whispered. “We’ve been in that clearing for a long time and they never bother us.”
Lt glanced over his shoulder.
The encampment looked old and abandoned, and he figured that was by design now.
Just a grouping of old vehicles gathered together a long time ago and forgotten out here in the woods.
Except for the churned earth.
There were tracks of muddy ruts from hundreds of feet that led in different directions. Down to the creek for water. Into the woods for hunting.
Even here, under the bridge, which would make a good place for shade when the sun was boiling the humidity in the atmosphere.
Tracks so familiar that the people who lived there might not even notice to pay attention to them, except when it rained.
But from the air, he wondered if it looked like a sign pointing the aliens to human habitation.
He lifted his blaster and put his gloved finger on the trigger guard.
“You ever do much flying back on earth?” he asked Annie. “Other than the last time I saw you do it.”
“You’re counting that as flying?” she smirked. “Yes.”
He pointed two fingers at his eyes and then at the muddled rut they had jogged on to cower under the bridge.
“You see that from the air pretty good?”
He watched her eyes focus on the path, then moved, roaming over the various twists and turns it took, just as his eyes had. Creek. Woods. Bridge. And further.
He could see there was a worn path around the RV’s that she spied. Great for sentry walking a tight perimeter.
But like a bullseye ring painted around the encampment.
“It’s going to be very evident,” she said.
Lt nodded.
“That’s what I figured.”
The hissing rush of a hovercraft patrol whizzed up the road, following the clear lines that Licks liked to use for navigation.
Twelve feet off the ground, wind whisking the dead leaves and dust that had started to layer of the asphalt since their arrival and cars stopped rolling.
Lt couldn’t count how many in the open air cockpit. They were too close.
But he assumed six or eight.
In the hovercraft.
The working hovercraft.
“Warbucks, how you feel about walking? Your legs still
tired as hell?”
She nodded and shifted in a crouch.
Lt turned to John.
“Ya’ll stay out of this,” he squinted at the man, though the look was lost under the reflective faceplate. “I’ve got some fucking business to conduct.”
The tone of his voice brooked no dissent and John shifted further back in the shadows under the overpass.
Lt shifted out from under the bridge and ran in a hunched crouch, rifle gripped tight in his gloved fingers.
He listened for the sound of the hovercraft floating above the trees. It was hard to hear at first.
Their landing had set a couple of trees on fire, caught in the backburn of the rear mounted plasma rockets that controlled their descent.
Though control was a strong word for what actually happened.
"Here they come," he whispered to himself.
He was the only one around to hear it.
The radios weren't working again.
He'd tried it after they landed.
Crashed, he corrected and settled the blaster against the edge of the tree.
Slivers of bark rained down on the hard packed ground, peppering the green moss with gray flakes.
The sound of the hovercraft grew slowly as it approached, like distant freeway noise picking up as daylight turned a commute into a free for all.
He saw the glint of sunshine off the carbon alloy hull, dulled by the grime of smog as it drifted over the trees and dropped Lick soldiers into the clearing to explore the wreckage.
Six of them. Taller than a man. Covered in black or silver jumpsuits and carrying lasers.
The only thing he knew that could harm his armor. He'd have to be careful.
The color meant rank, but since he hadn't spied much on the alien invaders, he didn't know which was more important. But size seemed to matter to the Lizard looking men.
The big guys were the ones they followed.
He lined up his sights on the largest one in silver and sent a blast through it's head. It popped with a smoky hiss, a noise that made the others turn and stare.
It only bought a second's hesitation, just a fraction of time. It was enough.
He dropped two more before they pinpointed his position. He got another as they sent the first bolt into the bole next to his head.
Lt ducked back, hiding the bulk of his armor behind the trunk. The hovercraft whizzed out of the clearing and circled back on his position.
He raised his blaster and sent three lancets of plasma blasts into the shape steering it.
A seven foot reptile body flopped over the side of the craft and smacked into the ground with a wet thud.
The hovercraft spun upside down and slammed into one of the two Lick soldier's left, splatting him in a splurt of goo and gore that squirted across the clearing and covered the last Lick standing in black ichor.
Lt rolled on his stomach from behind the tree, aimed and sent a blast into center mass.
It plopped backwards in a sprawl. Lt watched the leg twitch in a death throe, then roamed the perimeter.
"Not bad," he said to himself as he got up and checked again.
It would have been cleaner with a second or third gun. And the element of surprise helped.
Maybe like a crash, any ambush you could walk away from should be considered a success, he thought.
Then he went to check on Warbucks.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“That was amazing,” John stuttered as he stumbled out from under the shadow of the bridge, rifle held loose in his hands.
“I get that a lot,” Lt smirked. “You all right?”
He lifted his faceplate and squinted at Warbucks. She nodded.
“The view is better when I’m not upside down and sideways,” she said. “You’re pretty good with that.”
“Lots of practice,” he hefted the blaster and turned to point at the still floating disc in the sky.
“I got us a ride,” he said. “Think you can fly it?”
She shrugged as she stared at the alien vessel hovering out of reach over the encampment.
“One of my guys got pretty good at it,” said Lt. “And he ain’t even driven a car before, so I figure with you being a flyboy and experienced and all.”
“Flygirl,” she corrected.
He nodded and grinned, then turned toward John. Myra and a small group gathered behind him, more a show of support than seeking protection, Lt thought.
“I didn’t want to get us involved in a family spat,” he said. “But your brother asked us to do something, and now it turns out one of you is lying.”
John opened his mouth to respond, but Lt shook his helmeted head and cut him off.
“Don’t matter to me. I don’t give a shit. We got us a mission and that there little spat you saw me do made me realize how hungry I am to get back to killing Licks.”
He looked over John’s shoulders at the people behind the man, squinted at them, intense blue eyes traveling over their haggard and worn features.
“Ya’ll spend all this time fighting one another, and you can’t see the real enemy is out there.”
He pointed to the sprawled alien bodies scattered around the clearing.
“You put as much energy into killing Lick as you do in fighting each other, I wouldn’t have to go out there and fight this war by myself. You saavy?”
John nodded.
But Lt wasn’t sure.
He looked like he didn’t understand. Or rather, he did understand, but the jut of his jaw seemed petulant, as if he didn’t like things being pointed out to him.
Lt figured he might be the type who liked to learn a lesson a hard way, and wondered if a swift punch would teach him a lesson, or if they should just get in the hovercraft and get on with it.
Leave the two little cults arguing over whatever petty little thing it was they were arguing about.
Lying about.
But he was wrong.
“I think there’s someone you need to meet,” John said.
“I’ve met me a lot of people today, Baptist. Got a meal out of one, and a bunch of dead Lick’s out of the other. Who do you want to introduce me to?”
“A like mind,” John said with a half smile on his face.
“He here?” Lt peered over his shoulder. “Or she?”
“He’s at another camp,” said John. “It’s a half day’s walk, but he’s in the same fight you are. We are. That’s one of the reasons we moved out here. We want to fight too.”
Lt nodded.
“But your brother?”
“Wants to hide.”
“But he lied to send us after you?” Annie said.
John glanced at Myra who gave a small nod of agreement.
“Yeah, you must have really pissed him off,” said Lt. “But ya’ll can have a family reunion later. Do the Cain and Abel shit. If you got someone you want me to meet, mount up.”
Lt marched into the clearing, kneeled down and leaped into the open cockpit of the floating hovercraft.
He messed with the yoke and controls for a second, and brought it down to the ground in a jerking, stuttering spiral.
It bounced off the hard packed dirt once, sent up a small shower of grit and grime and rested eight inches off the ground.
Low enough for people who didn’t have enhanced biomechanical suits to hop into.
“Now that’s how you do a landing,” he smirked at Annie.
She pulled herself into the cockpit and shouldered Lt aside.
He watched her hands move over the alien controls, working to get familiar with the set up and operation.
Lt turned back to John.
“Let’s move Baptist. You’re burning daylight.”
John motioned for four of the men to join them and they scrambled into the vehicle.
“This is going to turn your half day into an hour,” Lt settled next to Annie. “If we make it through the landing.”
