by Ric Beard
“Lucy!” she screamed.
Somehow, over the fray, over the symphony from hell, Lucy heard her and turned, looking to her right and finding her mother. She spread out her arms, pleading for Reagan to pick her up. Reagan locked eyes with her daughter’s stubby little form. A flare of light shot in from Reagan’s right and vanished.
Lucy jerked.
She opened her mouth and a bright green light emanated from the back of her throat, framing the gaps between her teeth. Then she disintegrated.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Stow It
“They’re closing!” Moss yelled. “You got anything else?”
They were huddled down behind a rusted-out pickup truck, pumping their pulse rifles to raise the charge meters.
“Sounds like the mortars aren’t firing anymore,” Jenna said, her breath racing in and out. “I guess that means we’re out of ammo.”
“Yeah,” Moss yelled, even though he wore a throat mic. “If this shit goes totally south, I want you to know…”
“Stow it, asshole,” Jenna said.
Moss smiled. Jenna forced one of her own and fleetingly wondered what life after combat at this level would be like for people so accustomed to this tension. People like her. People like Moss. She knew perfectly well about post-traumatic stress, but she still wondered.
He looked down at his rifle and then back at Jenna. He nodded. She nodded. In perfect sync, they raised from their positions and started firing toward the hill.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Asshole with the Loudspeaker
The new woman was on her knees in the open, looking down at the earth, her mouth open wide like she was screaming, but making no sound. Scruff looked at the ground and saw glowing green fibers. Time slowed. It clicked. The girl. A pulse whizzed by his head, and he whipped around. A badlander was whooshing in on Jenna’s flank. Scruff raised his rifle, and without sighting the target in his scope, he tapped the stock’s full power setting and sent the badlander and his bike exploding into the sky, bringing down a furious rain of fire as the rider soared through the air with his limbs spread as if he were doing a cartwheel. Scruff broke cover, pumping his arms and legs hard as more tracers flew.
He was close. He could get there. Scruff looked left and saw another badlander speeding on his bike toward the woman. But she just stood there, mouth open. He now heard the haunting sounds of her moaning as if they were being channeled through her by a demon in the ground beneath her feet instead of originating from her. The man on the bike racing toward her was that asshole with the loudspeaker. He was motoring in from Scruff’s left as they bore down on their mutual target. He was a few steps away when he saw he was going to lose the race.
Scruff leaped and flung his rifle into the air with a scream of fury… He landed, rolled once and popped onto his feet as the rifle slung end over end and caught the man on the side of his head, altering the course of the bike and sending him into a side over side roll across the grass until he slammed hard into one of the pods. Scruff grabbed the woman, lifted her off the ground, took a few giant steps and dove, landing on top of her behind the cover of the pod.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Ally or Not
Tyler nailed a target and spun to bring down another.
“Come on, you fucking losers!”
He loved the surge. His body was alive, like he could feel electricity pulsing through him. The only way it could be better is if he could get Scruff’s axe and start taking it to these fuckers up close and personal. He swore to himself that if he could bring one down alive, he would drink the fucker’s blood.
Thanks to the auto turrets on Patty’s bed, the outsiders were taking a wider route around the camp to try to take them from the flank. But the real threats were those trucks. There were maybe five seconds between rocket launches the way they were switching off between the two vehicles. Luckily the assholes couldn’t seem to shoot them straight.
Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed motion nearby. He turned and saw Sanchez running to new cover, so he could get a better angle on the trucks. Tyler raised his rifle and shot an outsider who was coming at Sanchez from the west. He looked back at Sanchez just in time to see his temple explode as a lead round blew a hole in his head. Tyler watched as his eyes went blank; his body seemed to freeze for a moment before crumpling unceremoniously to the ground.
Ally or not, watching him die made Tyler giddy. His face spread into a wide grin.
Tyler turned in time to see a huge green light flying in his direction, but before he could react—
Chapter Fifty
A High-Pitched Whistle
Scruff crouched and looked around the corner of the pod, the woman curled into a ball next to him, bawling. The first truck was no more than sixty yards away. He dropped his pack and pulled out a long rubber cord with a leather pocket attached to it. His fingers grasped a translucent blue ball in his vest and Scruff loaded it into the leather pocket of the sling. He stepped out, whipped the sling around his head until it whistled loudly and released, sending the ball hurling through the air. There was a high-pitched whistle as it flew.
Chapter Fifty-One
A Genius in Bear's Clothing
“What’s that noise?” Moss asked. Jenna looked up and spun her head around, tracing the source of the whistle. Scruff’s massive form stood behind a pod whipping his sling in a circle, the ball over his head becoming brighter and brighter as the motion created the acidic mixture inside.
“That’s Scruff. Plasma grenade.”
“No shit?” Moss said.
“Dude is a genius in bear’s clothing.” A bullet zipped past her ear with a buzz like a mosquito. She scowled, turned, and continued firing.
Screaming ensued at a distance as the plasma grenade dropped into the back of a truck and popped like a blister, raining acidic plasma all over the occupants. They started leaping out of the truck, bumping into each other as they tried to frantically beat the glowing blue substance from their clothes. Then the plasma ignited, setting them alight in blue flames.
An explosion rocked the area, and Jenna ducked behind the rusted-out truck.
“Shit!” She yelled. She looked up at Moss, who was looking past her and frowning. “What?”
She turned. Patty’s frame was engulfed in fire, the auto turret gone, and the cab’s window blown out. Inside, she could see Ray’s form, engulfed in flames. “Fuck!” She felt her throat tighten and looked back at Moss.
Behind him, lying idle on the ground, she saw Sanchez. She looked around, but there was no sign of Tyler. The motorcycles swarmed around them like angry bees, their riders firing wildly with no intent to their shots. They had the upper hand and they knew it. They planned on taking prisoners.
“Let’s take as many of them with us as we can,” she said.
Jenna turned her eyes on the remaining truck. A man with a launcher on his shoulder had lowered it long enough to watch his buddies burn in the blue plasma’s flames. Then he turned and leveled the rocket right at Jenna and Moss.
Prisoners be damned.
Jenna screamed, “Incoming!”
Part Twelve
The Badlands
Chapter Fifty-Two
Evasion Recommended
Day 6
Sunday, Mar 24, 2137
The Badlands
As ordered, Sean had managed to skirt the OK City outpost in Little Rock and just barely dodge the incoming backup road crew as he returned to the interstate. If Sara the onboard computer hadn’t shortened the radar intervals, he would’ve rolled right into them.
The going ever since had been smooth. Whoever’d been clearing these roads was doing a hell of a job. There were cracks in the asphalt and rocks here and there, but The Beast had no problem rolling right over them. Remaining compact cars of another age still sat atop the asphalt, but they were easy to fit between and the larger rigs were rolled onto their sides in the grass and mud beside the interstate. Sean would like to see th
e rig that pushed those babies. It must have been a monster.
The crazy storm cell had cleared out earlier that evening, allowing him to see more clearly in the distance with the aid of the H.U.D.’s night vision tech, now that the sun had just dipped beneath the western horizon. There was no sign of any outsider raiding parties but Sean knew better than to push his luck. The radar was constantly pinging in a 360-degree circle around the tank, which he hadn’t thought was a great designation for such a sleek vehicle—until he’d raised the pulse turret and saw the targeting system. Sean found himself wondering if the machine would kick at all if he pulled the trigger and blew its load, but considering the power drain about which Ninety-teeth had warned him, he decided not to find out unless required.
The fusion glass on the left blinked and started drawing symbols on the HUD, beeping with the appearance of each new signal.
“Lifeforms Detected,” Sara said.
“Distance?”
“Two-point-seven-miles ahead.”
“Plot alternate course.”
“Course plotted.”
But when Sean looked at the screen, he saw there were actually two sets of lifeforms. One small set was on the interstate itself while the other set was off to the north. As he watched, the concentrated circle of dots in the north started to spread out, moving to the south and west.
A raid. Holy crap. Maybe I can check it out in stealth mode.
“Continue previous course.”
“Confirmed.”
The Beast rolled until Sara told him the life forms were within half a mile, then pulled the tank off of the interstate. He engaged the camouflage as The Beast glided up a hill to the top of the ridge where he brought it to a halt beneath the sprawling branches of an ancient oak.
“Grid,” he said. A grid with numbered quadrants popped onto the windshield. “Zoom.”
“Please specify magnification.”
“Sixteen.”
The entire compressed glass windshield zoomed, giving him a wide view of the scene while auto-adjusting the size of the grid rectangles.
“Wow,” he muttered.
On the ridge, he saw a man holding a box and talking into it. As he watched, a stream of smoke appeared, tracing upward into the sky as a mortar round flew toward the ridge. Tracers tore through the air in both directions. The man holding the box dove away just before a bullet ripped through another man behind him who had been holding some sort of portable radar dish. The man mounted a motorcycle and sped off to the southeast, down the hill. Sean struggled to see everything, the lights flying everywhere, the explosions, his brain having a hard time making sense of the scene.
The silver cube objects littered across the grass south of the interstate were popping into the air like pennies on a subwoofer. A blond and a man in a ball cap and battle gear were hunkered down behind a rusted-out truck at the edge of the interstate. They were road crew, then, and the assholes on the ridge, the ones swarming around them on cycles, and the ones on the back of the trucks were badlanders.
He debated. Alexandra had been clear. He wasn’t to engage. He could end up losing precious power. But power was nothing next to lives. He could recharge, just so he didn’t overwork the cannon and blow it out. People were dropping like flies down there, and though the road crew was putting up a diligent fight, it didn’t look good. They were seriously outnumbered.
“Fusion Signature Detected.”
“What?”
“Fusion—”
An arcing green light screamed down from the very top of the hill to the north, washed the camp in green, and disintegrated a man and the pod standing behind him. Sean shivered.
“What the hell was that?”
“Fusion cannon located,” Sara said. “Please note that the hull does not protect against fusion impact. Evasion recommended.”
A red, blinking square traced the cannon on the northern ridge.
Where the hell did a bunch of cavemen get a fusion cannon? Shit! What is a fusion cannon? That guy evaporated. If they hit the truck those two are hiding behind with that thing…
“Can we hit it from here?”
“Target is within mortar range, Sean.”
“Load mortars.”
“Mortars are pre-loaded.”
“Of course they are.”
“Of course,” Sara said.
Sean quickly looked over the map.
“Zoom out. Eight times.” He could see the full panoramic view again. The view was divided into numbered squares. “Show me the cannon in this view.” The camera zoomed. He looked at the quadrant in which the fusion cannon rested. It was quadrant two. “Aim for quadrant two, quadrant four and…” he looked at the HUD a final time, “…quadrant seven.”
“Indirect Fire?” Sara asked.
“Blow the shit to hell.”
“I interpret that order to mean you desire high impact without regard to collateral damage in those quadrants. Please verify.”
“You’re god damn right. Verified.”
“Aiming mortars, up to four targets per salvo.”
“Fire.”
Sean watched as round holes appeared in the corners of The Beast, and mortars launched into the night sky. There was no smoke, no heat signature, as if they were propelled from an internal catapult. He mused that such a launcher made sense in a stealth vehicle. It would keep enemies from detecting the launch. But he also wondered what enemies the tank was designed to fight against, and if they were advanced enough to detect a launch. He lost track of the mortars in the darkening sky.
“Can you track the mortars? Show them to me?”
“Yes, Sean,” Sara said. “Tracking Mortars. See display for output.”
The HUD put four red dots on the screen as the camera panned to the sky, and Sean watched as they all seemed to converge at the top of their arcs. High in the post-dusk sky, orange light appeared as the boosters ignited, and they split off in different directions, hurling toward the ground like meteors.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Pick Them Off
“Incoming!” Jenna yelled. She hurled herself at Moss, flung her arm around him, landed, and rolled to the side to pull him on top of her behind the overturned truck.
A rumbling sound filled the night sky, sweeping from the west to the east as four bright lights shot across the sky at blinding speed. Raging explosions seemed to suck the air out of her lungs and she squeezed her eyes shut as a warm shockwave of wind blew through the camp. The world was filled with a ringing sound. A long note played somewhere inside her head and slowly faded into a void of silence before a sucking wind sound replaced it as the earth seemed to spin beneath her for a few heartbeats. When she opened her eyes, they met with the walnut irises of the man atop her, staring down. Their gazes lingered for a long moment.
“Get off me, dummy. You’re crushing my boobs.”
“Oh, roger.” He rolled off. They both sat up and peeked around the corner, his head above hers. The second badlander truck was a burning metal frame engulfed in orange and blue flames.
Another explosion. Screams. Jenna saw a fireball dissipate into a black crater up on the hill.
“Scruff? Did you call in drone support?”
Scruff grunted a negative.
“Retreat!” someone screamed. Bikes throttled up as they zoomed away.
“Don’t let them run!” Jenna snarled. “Pick them off!”
The reply to her command was a lone grunt.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Flickering
Moss sat on the same rock where Jenna’d rolled her feet over the hot rocks. His forehead rested on his hand.
Chapman’s arm blown off, dead. Sanchez, head blown open, dead. Ray, dead. Tyler, assumed dead because she found a huge puddle of green next to a mostly disintegrated pod near where Tyler had been standing the last time she’d seen him. She didn’t even have crew or machinery to dig them proper graves. Scruff was binding Wolfe’s hands.
A wave of loss filled her b
ody, and she collapsed to the ground. Her shoulders bobbed up and down as she let her emotions flood out. The tension built up in her chest, and she released it in a cry of agony reverberating across the burned field of murder.
All my guys ever did was serve others. All they wanted was to open the door, so civilization could walk back into the world.
Jenna banged her fist against the side of her head.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fucking mother fuckers! Die! All of you!”
Hands gripped her shoulders, and she looked up. Scruff knelt before her, his green eyes burning their glare into her own, his face expressionless. He stood up, bringing her with him and pulling her off the ground and into his arms. Jenna bawled. She pulled out of Scruff’s arms and turned when she heard Moss’s voice. He was standing next to them. His arm extended, a gloved hand pointing.
“W-w-what?” She took a deep breath to stabilize her voice.
“I said, it couldn’t have been a drone. The heavy ones don’t fly patrol. No way it would’ve gotten here in time. Besides, look at the craters.”
“Agreed.” But Jenna wasn’t looking at the craters at all. She was looking up a grassy hill to the southwest. A massive tree stood atop the hill.
