by M. L. Banner
When they had walked what felt like miles, they finally reached a section that was actually labeled Misc. Area.
Richards once again halted at the end corner of the aisle she needed, intending to stand vigil at his post. Melanie wasn’t paying attention, letting her mind wander about Carrington, gazing at the floor just ahead of her, until suddenly he was there. The surprise caused her to jump and her forward inertia, pushed by the extra thirty pounds behind her head, caused her to tilt off balance. Two things happened at once: she felt she might fall over and had to counter-weight by spinning herself around a hundred-eighty degrees. She also felt the gun, which must have worked itself free of her waistband in the commotion, slide down her pant leg. It proceeded to pop out and skid along the floor until it came to rest at his feet.
In the long moment that followed, they both stared at the gun, considering its many implications. And they both reacted at the same time.
Richards glanced at her from behind a mask of surprise and reached for his sidearm.
Melanie did another half spin, grabbed one end of the heavy metal conduit and swung like a slugger attempting to knock it out of the ballpark. Homerun!
She was surprised how light it felt, how it connected exactly where she was aiming. Before he had even drawn his weapon, she heard the bonk and felt the spray of his blood. Both he and the metal pipe hit the floor to the thunderous applause of the thumping in her ears.
No looking back. She grabbed her gun and jogged to the shelf Carrington had told her about. Reaching back, she clutched the small clock radio right away and slid it into her backpack.
She hesitated over Richards, who was either dead or out cold. Then a sly smile crept onto her face. She drew her knife and bent over him. He would help her after all.
When she was finished, she picked up the pipe and hoisted it back onto her shoulder and hurried back to the entrance.
Just in front of Richards’s desk, where he buzzed people in, she could hear several security guards calling for him, probably wondering where the man who never left his post was. They filed into the main Supplies room, and Melanie ducked behind the first shelving area. Two passed, jogging and calling his name. She slipped past the check-in area and then the exit and headed to B216, feeling what she was sure would be a short-lived sense of relief.
Just before she reached the end of the T-intersection in the hallway, someone yelled, “Hey you… stop!”
37.
Cicada
“Did Max actually tell them to go blank themselves?” Sally asked Preston, who was making rounds to convince everyone to take up arms or at least to hunker down and prepare for a fight. She had been keeping company with Webber while he rested on a cot in the infirmary. Sue and Pel, who were injured in the failed assault led by Max and Tom, were also there sleeping. Sally had The Stand open and resting facedown in her lap.
Preston couldn’t help but smile at her self-censorship, refusing to quote the F-word. She was raised well.
“I’d like to fight,” Webber offered, lifting his head and grimacing at his discomfort.
“No, son.” Preston held his palm out to stop him. “You need to rest. You know you have nothing to prove to anyone.”
“My face attests to that, right?” Webber’s bandages lifted with his smile, but even smiling hurt too much and his bandages sagged back.
“Here.” Preston rested the AR-15 Webs had been practicing with over the past months beside the cot. “Keep this by your side, just in case.”
He looked to Sally and hesitated, knowing what a struggle it had been for her.
She glared back at him, feeling the debilitating fear flood back again, and then turned to Webber. “Webs, please tell me you weren’t fibbing when you said we have a plan?”
The men flashed looks at each other. Either they had ESP or they shared a big secret and Webber hadn’t yet received approval to respond the way he wanted.
“Sally, we do have a Plan B,” Preston stated in his usual composed voice, “but until then, only if it’s needed, you know how to shoot, don’t you?” He held out a rifle for her.
She grabbed the M4, pulled back the charging rod and let it slide a round forward. Then she flicked the safety on and rested it on her lap, barrel away from them.
Both of them grinned.
Sally looked back up to Preston. “Uncle Max taught me. He said, ‘Sally, it’s easy. Just aim at the bad guy and squeeze the trigger.’” Of course, everything was easy for Uncle Max.
Preston chuckled at the obvious Maxism. Then he became serious. “So, you’re staying here with Webber?”
“Yep,” she confirmed.
“All right then. Keep your eyes open,” he said to both of them. To Webber he added, “Listen for the air-raid horn, son.” He waited for Webber’s confirmation. “You may need to help these folks too.” Preston motioned to the two sleeping in their beds.
“Got it, sir. And thanks for standing up for me.” Webber smiled and offered his hand.
Preston squeezed it and laid his other hand on Sally’s shoulder, then walked to the other two occupied cots to wake their occupants with the news.
“What horn?” Sally asked.
After he explained that part, they waited.
The night’s green auroras were now rumbling like angry storm clouds, their illuminations making everything look jaundiced and sickly. It was an aerial mirror of how each of them felt right now gawking at what was coming their way.
After Max had delivered Cicada’s reply to the three red-robed representatives—the red looked gray—of the army of men and women outside, they said nothing and left, blending in with their hordes. A few minutes later, he watched hundreds of red robes begin walking in a mass around both sides of Cicada’s walls. Like puddles building up from raindrops, pools of red robes swarmed and clustered in positions around the complex. They seemed completely unconcerned about being shot, staying approximately five hundred meters from the wall, just as Cicada’s flyers demanded. Perhaps he should have just had his people start shooting, but even with the advantage of their protective walls, this enemy had the numbers, and with numbers, there was a chance to overwhelm. Plus, he was curious what they would do next and wanted to play it out a little more first.
The moat of red-black stretched around the entire circumference of Cicada, now a narrow band as far as he could see. Max signaled for his guards to be ready by swinging a propane lantern back and forth. Fifteen of the sixty-four breathing residents of Cicada were on its walls.
He held the lantern up toward the Observation Tower and covered the glass with his hand. Then he uncovered it and then covered it and then uncovered it again.
A light flashed there, in similar fashion. Shingles was ready. Shingles was a scary-good shot, too; he literally could pick off a bird from the tree line, almost a mile away.
He had instructed all his people to not shoot until one of those red-robes had crossed the line, or if it looked like they were processing forward. The near-impossible part was keeping a two-and-a-half-mile wall secure with only fifteen people. On their side, the walls were very hard to scale, with razor-sharp barbs everywhere along the wall, which also had a slick coating, making it impossible to free climb. With grappling hooks, it was possible, but still difficult. And of course, everyone in Cicada knew how to shoot. It was a requirement that they train with an M4. First Preston had trained them, and then when Tom came on board, he took over. Each had their assigned M4, having stopped by Operations to pick them up on their way to the wall. And finally each had plenty of ammo, in spite of the enemy’s large numbers. They just needed to be patient.
They waited.
Johnson crouched low and hid in the dark shadows cast by the Comms building on the soccer field. Every time he heard a set of footsteps, he pressed himself lower to remain unseen. In a way, he had been in the shadows all this time, operating as one of two moles in Cicada. After Sampson was killed, it had gotten pretty dicey for him. But the timing couldn’t have been b
etter, with the army preparing to attack; he would have to ask Westerling how he’d arranged that.
It wouldn’t be very much longer until he could leave this place. He craned his neck up, waiting to see the sign that told him when to do his part. And when he was done, it would mean the end of Cicada.
The first shot rang out like the screech from a giant turkey vulture alerting the other vultures about a newly dead meal and the feast that awaited them. This vulture must have been nested up in the tree line, hidden from the auroral light.
Max spun around to the sound’s location and searched for a sign of its target. Another shot from the opposite side, and he saw one of his people on the corresponding wall crumple and fall into a heap.
They had snipers.
“Take cover!” he bellowed through his cupped hands. “Take cover. They’re in the tree line.”
More sniper shots, followed by two white flares arced into the air toward them: one from the east and the other from the west side of Cicada.
That was their signal.
The throngs of darkened robes swarmed the walls. Where the walls were on a mesa, they scaled the rocks leading up to them.
The red-robes should have been easy targets, but whenever one of Max’s people would take a shot, the snipers would fire and force them behind the protective cover of the wall.
They were being pinned down.
First it was just one… then two… then it was many. Grappling hooks clinked against the tops of their stone walls, many of them grabbing hold. That’s how I’d have done it. They’re scaling the walls.
Max yelled for them to cut the ropes as he hurried over to the closest sentry, but they couldn’t. Guns, not knives.
Holding his .45 close to the rope, Max fired off three shots to sever it. He handed his knife to the sentry and signaled for her to cut the next one.
The sentry closest to them shot at the top rope multiple times, trying to hit it where it crested over the top of the wall while trying to stay behind the wall’s cover, but he was felled by a sniper’s bullet.
Max leaned over the inside of the wall and yelled down to a woman on the ground, already bounding up the first steps of the stairwell closest to him. “Go grab all the axes and heavy knives or swords you can carry.”
It was Magdalena. She nodded and dashed off toward Operations.
The others futilely attempted to shoot at the rope, or waited for help.
Max handed out axes and large knives to each sentry, who then raced, bent double below the wall’s protection, to a rope that nested itself nearby and severed it. Magdalena was doing the same further away. When she had handed out everything, she occasionally stopped to cut a rope herself using the knife she always carried with her. Once, as they passed each other when she was slicing away at a rope, the M4 she carried loosely around her slipped forward and she had to stop and readjust.
Max asked, “Do you know how to shoot one of those things?”
“Yes, of course,” she said and then stormed off, otherwise very calm under fire.
There were just too many of them. All their people were running around the walls, desperately trying to keep up with the newly appearing ropes and people climbing them, and so far they’d succeeded in preventing anyone from gaining the top of a wall. It seemed like this could go on forever. Then he realized this was their plan to keep them busy. He scanned the walls and noticed that no one was climbing the north wall, by the gate. It was all a diversion.
He ran toward that gate, at least half a mile away, hopping over a couple sentries sawing at the enemy’s thick ropes with their knives. He was almost there when he glimpsed a cart being pushed by two red-robes toward the gate. He fired off a couple of shots while running, not expecting to hit them but hoping at least to slow them down. They were already running away from the gate; their job was done.
Max hollered to his people below. “Get away from the gate. Get away from the gate!” Knowing what was coming next, he tossed himself onto the wall’s stony walkway. The bomb hit the moment he did.
The explosion nearly shook him off the wall and over the railing.
As with the previous strike, the gate tilted inward. Almost immediately, using the dusty haze and smoke from the blast as cover, a few of the red-robes were coming through. He fired a few shots as he bounded down the stairwell.
More and more trickled in; some were now coming over the walls.
He yelled to the wall sentries, “Retreat.” They echoed his command and started down their corresponding stairwells out of the line of fire and headed for the Rec Facility.
This was their last line of defense before Plan B.
On top of the Rec Facility, their own sharpshooters fired at each person who slid over the wall, as still others were coming through the gate.
At that moment, Max realized Cicada might fall.
Johnson had seen the sign and dashed toward Operations. He passed panicked residents and sentries running to their backup position. But it would be no use for them; after he did his job, there would be no saving Cicada. It would fall within the hour.
38.
Bios-2
Melanie made sure she could wedge the piece of conduit in between the gamma radiation venting and what she suspected was another crucial piece of the reactor. The one thing Carrington hadn’t left in his notes was any detail on where to position the conduit with the explosive inside, so as to focus the detonation and make sure the damage was absolute in those two places. But she figured any place was a sweet spot on this thing. And with Westerling and Lunder out of the way, she didn’t think anyone else would attempt to rebuild it; who else in this world would be that monstrous? Further, based on the radioactive warning signs, and what she knew about nuclear reactors, she suspected her efforts might have the added benefit of making Bios-2 uninhabitable for everybody for a long time.
It looked like Carrington had set the detonator to the alarm switch of the clock; when the alarm went off, so would the detonator and its explosive charge, now concentrated through the conduit on two spots of the reactor. She set the alarm for 1:00, figuring that three hours should be more than enough time to get the scientists out and get clear of this area. After sliding it into the conduit and wedging the conduit in place, she examined her work. It looked like it belonged there.
She backed away and walked out of the room, feeling good about this. Now she would try to get the scientists out. She hoped Rush got her note under the rock by his door and took the rest of the scientists to the rendezvous point.
“Mommy, is Crapaw coming too?” asked Leanne, her hand fidgeting in her mother’s.
“Yes, Leanne. Your Crapaw is coming,” Deanna coaxed her with a smile and a soft tug, pulling her a little closer. Her daughter loved her grandpa. She just wished she could tell her the truth: that he was a horrible, evil man. She hated her father for so many things, many she didn’t dare even think about because they were too awful. At least he would do anything to keep his granddaughter safe. She supposed that her keeping up appearances—even in a constant state of inebriation—was better than being outside Bios-2’s walls. But, was it any better being a prisoner inside them? It was all too much to handle. She needed a drink, bad.
Her buzz was wearing out and, with it, the fuzzy memories of what her father had done were becoming clearer, like blurry images coming into focus in binoculars. Then there was the painful throbbing at the base of her skull, the distant thunder of an approaching migraine. She either needed to get away from these two guards so she could visit her purse, or get to the bunker, which had a fully stocked bar.
She turned to one of the guards. “Are we close?” She somewhat feared she’d never find her way if she ever left to use a bathroom. The hallways were a maze that went on forever.
“Yes ma’am; it’s one more hallway down this way,” the handsome guard said as he pointed.
Deanna’s purse slipped and she let go of Leanne to keep it from hitting the ground. She had snatched a bottle of h
er father’s bourbon, and she didn’t want it to break and advertise her theft to anyone with a nose (and also ruin her chances of a drink).
“Whew,” she said under her breath, glad she grabbed it just in time.
She heard a giggle behind her and saw Leanne was gone.
“Dammit, Leanne; you get back here right now!” she shrieked, but Leanne didn’t answer.
She heard a door close down a hallway they had just passed and took off running, followed closely by one of the two panicked guards.
So far so good.
Melanie was surprised that there were so few guards around: none in the turbine room and none in the hallways. She was about to congratulate herself when she heard voices pouring down the hallway right in front of her. She didn’t want to return to B216 and the turbine room, so she ducked into B233A and pulled on the door to speed up its closure, she added resistance at the end to keep it quiet.
Immediately she heard someone say, “I saw her go down this way. She really clocked you, Richards, and you’re hand is bleeding a lot.”
An older, deeper voice replied, just behind the door she held closed. “Let’s continue this way,” Richards said. “I have a feeling.” Their footsteps faded down the way she had come. She cracked open the door, looked at the T she was headed to and then back, confirming that Richards—she had thought he’d have bled to death or at least be sleeping off her concussion-gift for hours—had in fact left. Feeling safe, she hurried back into the hallway and collided with someone small. It was Leanne!
“Hey, sweetie, what are you doing here?” Melanie had bent down to looked at the little face. She was still wearing the necklace she had given her.
Leanne looked behind her, and then dashed into B233A with a giggle. Melanie followed.
