Fink picked off two more.
“All units, if you’ve got infrared use it to track these things,” Jon radioed.
Only a handful of the men possessed any type of heat-sensing sights or devices, but those who did directed grenades and rifle fire. The odds of the battle finally started to turn.
Meanwhile, Fink picked off another one, dwindling the school of Bore-Sharks to five.
However, his success drew attention. Captain Fink watched through his scope as the remaining creatures formed a wedge and ‘swam’ across the town…in his direction.
“Um…I think they’re on to us.”
“Then keep shooting,” Brewer said.
Fink, prone on the side of the slope with the rifle balanced in a small tripod, drew a bead on the approaching group. He fired a series of semi-automatic shots from the big gun.
“That’s one…,” he reported as the school closed to one hundred yards.
Casey carefully aimed and pulled the trigger.
Then again.
“That’s two…three to go”
Seventy yards.
“Casey, are you going to get them all?”
Blam.
“Shit. Missed.”
He pulled the trigger again but nothing happened. No bullet fired.
“Oh you gotta be friggin’ kidding me!”
“Jam?” Jon shouted. “It jammed? Jesus Christ! Fix it!”
Casey went to work on the weapon, struggling to remove the huge clip.
Reverend Johnny acted. He grabbed his M16 and descended the slope, directly toward the trio of closing fins.
“Reverend! What the hell are you doing?”
“The Lord is my Shepherd!”
Reverend Johnny ran down the rocky slope toward City Hall and the non-operational command vehicle, but would need to outmaneuver the bore-sharks to get there; all three adjusted their course as they locked on to his body heat at fifty yards.
He fumbled with his utility belt as he ran and found a flare.
“Let…me…have…your…undivided…” the flare sparked to life, “attention!”
He could nearly feel the sharks roar in hunger as the sparkling heat signature beckoned like a siren’s call.
The creatures closed to twenty yards…ten…five…
Johnny cut hard and changed directions like a halfback heading for the end zone. As he swerved, one of the attackers leapt from the ground, hungry for a new meal. For an instant, Johnny stared directly into its round mouth. He saw no teeth, only pinkish gums dripping with liquid and he understood: the creatures did not chew their prey; they dissolved them. Dissolved them with the same acid that allowed them to ‘swim’ through rock and earth.
In the next instant, that Bore-Shark disappeared into the ground again.
All three creatures circled around for another attack.
“Get that gun going!” Johnny yelled to his friends on the hillside. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this!”
The Reverend’s nifty dodging bought him enough time to reach the snow-covered dirt road outside City Hall. He aimed specifically for the cluster of fuel drums by the partially assembled command vehicle.
Johnny set the flare on top of one drum, bear-hugged the container, and found the strength to move it-in hops-thirty feet away from the other two barrels.
Behind him, the three remaining Bore-Sharks completed their circle and found his heat signature again. They ‘swam’ through the ground in his direction. When they closed to fifteen yards, they accelerated for the kill.
“And Joshua said, why hast thou troubled us? The Lord shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with FIRE…”
The Reverend ran, leaving the flare atop the fuel drum.
All three Bore-Sharks greedily targeted the heat source of the flare. The lead creature jumped from the ground with its acid burrowing excretions coating its head as usual. It swooped half the petrol barrel and the flare into its mouth.
Boom.
A golden explosion knocked Johnny off his feet. He felt a blast of heat singe his neck as he fell face-first into the cold earth. A rain of burning liquid fell around him, thawing that cold ground to mush.
The explosion left behind a crater, chunks from two melted monsters, and a smell similar to burning electrical wires.
“Praise the Lord, two for the price of one.”
The remaining creature withdrew, most likely disorientated or frightened off by the explosion. It ‘swam’ around to the far side of City Hall, disappearing from the Reverend’s view.
Johnny brushed glowing embers from his jacket, stood, and started back toward the mountainside and his comrades.
The fin appeared almost directly in front of him, allowing no time to dodge or even think about dodging. The Bore-Shark jumped. It seemed to hover over Reverend Johnny’s head as if time paused so the beast could relish its victory.
Then its side exploded. Steaming acid splattered inches from Johnny’s feet and the ugly beast with the big round maw flopped to the tundra like a fish out of water.
A split second later, Johnny heard the clap of the sniper rifle shot that saved his life.
Up ahead on the hillside, Casey Fink wiped his brow.
“Much obliged, Mr. Fink!” Reverend Johnny yelled.
Fink stood from his prone sniper position and both he and Jon Brewer descended the slope where they met with the Reverend.
“You just blew up a third of our fuel,” Brewer said, eyeing the dying flames from one barrel of gas.
“My apologies, General, but it was the only plan I could muster on such short notice.”
Fink said, “Unless anyone sees a tail fin swimming around here, I think we got every last one of the things.”
“Good,” Brewer said and pulled his radio from his belt. “I’m going to call everyone in. I want my ride put together and then I want to get on our way.”
Minutes later, the expeditionary force gathered around City Hall. While the technicians finished assembling and fueling the command vehicle, others collected body parts of their fallen comrades and managed to dig shallow graves in the hard ground.
None of them noticed the storm in the distance moving across the horizon: a gray whirlwind spinning to the north.
The competition had arrived.
17. Potential
Nina Forest arrived at Wrightsville Beach just in time for the hard work.
More specifically, the ‘guard’ at the bridge directed her to a small, one-story building a few blocks from the beachfront. There she found Jim Brock, his ‘orphans,’ and a small crew of adults working on a community project.
Nina spied two large piles of timber as well as buckets and boxes of tools outside of the “Wrightsville Beach Physicians Association,” a single-story building that happened to be missing most of one wall.
Jim greeted her as she parked at the curb. Denise Cannon stood in the distance with a group of bored-looking kids ranging in age from under eight to over twelve.
“Hello, Captain,” Brock offered as Nina exited the topless Humvee. “Did you bring a hammer?”
She looked at the hole in the wall then to him.
“Actually, I brought an appetite. An appetite for seafood.”
Brock tried hard but he could not contain his smile. “Great…that’s great. But-”
“But you’ve got something else going right now,” she stated the obvious.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that this is the only doctor’s office around and some big hairy thing knocked it down the other day. Some of those dogs-I mean, K9s-of yours chased it away but not before…before this…” he waved at the damage.
“Damn. Well, I guess we better start working if we’re going to make that dinner before it gets too dark.”
“Hey, uh, Captain-I mean Ms. Forest-uh, no, I mean Cap-”
“Nina.”
“Oh. Right. Um, Nina, you don’t need to do this. It’s going to take us forever. Besides,
you’ve done more than-”
“Forever? Listen, Jim, we just have to put some elbow grease into this.” She walked toward the building with Brock in tow.
“Well there’s only four of us, I mean, I guess, five of us now, so it’s going to take a long, long time.”
“What about them?” Nina nodded at the kids standing around.
“Oh, yeah, them. It’s just me watching them now and I couldn’t leave them by themselves.”
Nina yelled, “Hey, ‘D’!”
Denise Cannon stood straight and cocked her head in such a smug manner that she might as well have told her friends, Yeah, that’s right, I’m tight with the coolest soldier around. Worship me.
Nina approached Denise and her circle of admirers.
“Hey, um, hey,” Denise said but kept a ‘cool’ posture.
“How you doing, girl?”
Jim Brock’s mouth nearly unhinged in fascination as he watched the exchange.
“Everything’s, like, cool. You know?” Denise answered.
“Hey, Denise, I need you to take care of something.”
“Yeah? Whatchya need?”
“We got to get this wall patched up real quick like, so I need you to take charge,” the Captain said.
“M-me? I mean, take charge of what?”
“Your gang over there,” Nina answered. “I know most of them are just kids, but I figured you could maybe get them to help do this.”
Jim Brock tried to say, “Oh, the kids don’t need to-”
“Yeah, you bet,” Denise answered.
“Tell me what you think,” Nina asked of Denise. “But I was thinking maybe me, Jim, and the other people here would start putting up the boards and nailing them on; do the dry wall and stuff. You could take your team and start hauling over those supplies. Just keep the real little kids away from the sharp stuff.”
“Nina, you don’t need to help with this,” Jim said but he was not really a part of the conversation.
Denise suggested, “Maybe we should pile the stuff up to the side there and then run for nails and stuff when you need it.”
“Damn good idea,” Nina nodded. “Why don’t you get them organized while I straighten things up over here.”
“Yeah, sure. I mean, roger that and all, right?”
“Right.”
Denise used all her strength to suppress a grin as she turned to the group of kids. “Hey, listen up! Billy, Joey, and Kate you guys come over here and start throwin’ all the nails in these buckets.”
One of the older boys-maybe fifteen-asked the obvious question, “Who put you in charge?”
“Don’t waste my time with stupid questions. Just do it.”
Billy did not ask any more stupid questions.
Nina and Jim walked to the clinic wall. He stared at her the entire way over.
“What?”
“I just…just-wow.”
The two met up with the other adults and quickly put things into good working order. They rebuilt the wall in less than two hours. While not a perfect match, Nina felt it filled the hole nicely, at least for the time being.
Nina watched a group of children run from the ocean’s edge carrying buckets of seaweed. The kids worked their way through the tangled mess of brush that had once been a meticulously kempt garden. Eventually, they rejoined the gathering on the patio deck.
“Seaweed?” Nina turned to Jim Brock and accepted a glass of water he offered.
“What? You’ve never been to a clam bake before?”
The kids ran to the trio of chefs overseeing a big barbecue pit where a layer of round stones smoldered. Those chefs accepted the slimy green bounty and then carefully layered the seaweed over the hot stones.
“We’re not eating the seaweed. Right? Seriously, Jim, right?”
His poker face broke, he laughed, and admitted, “Hey, where’s that tough survival-girl? No, we’re not eating seaweed. More like Yellow Fin Tuna and Marlin, or whatever else they caught today.”
Smoke rose from the pit.
She said, “Fresh seafood. I remember when you paid top dollar in restaurants for that.”
“No other way for us,” he told her. “We can’t really store any of it, so we eat tonight what we caught this afternoon. Some times the fishermen come back empty handed. In the early days, that meant eating canned soup or camping food; stuff we scavenged. The last year, well, it usually meant eating nothing at all. Are things going to be a lot better now? Now that you’re here?”
She enjoyed a swig of water and answered, “Me? No, I just kill the monsters.”
“You know what I mean. Now that your ‘Empire’ is here.”
“Not my Empire, Jim. Yours now, too. You’re a part of it. If the fishermen had come back without a catch today, you’d still have something to eat.” She considered. “Well, probably. I mean, today, yes. That’s doesn’t mean there aren’t hard times ahead.”
They stood at the edge of the patio deck looking out across the tangled gardens and the white sand toward the steady roll and splash of the surf. Darkness crept up from the horizon but they still had time before the sun set.
Behind Nina and Jim, dozens of people who had spent years hiding in the old resorts along the beach celebrated their liberation from the horrors that had invaded Wilmington five years ago. Music played from a tape recorder, a couple of people danced at the bottom of an empty swimming pool, and little kids chased one another around a veranda.
“What’s it like?” He asked. “What’s it like everywhere else?”
“It’s not like the old days, before ‘all this’, if that’s what you’re wondering. I mean, things aren’t easy. Food is always in short supply, so are medical supplies, and things like shoes and toothbrushes. Towns and villages and stuff are scattered around and the roads in between are pretty dangerous. People still do a lot of scavenging through vacant houses and buildings to find stuff to trade or that can be recycled into something useful. Of course, people who do that don’t live as long as those who stay in town; there are still lots of bad things out there.”
He told her, “I’m just happy that we’re not hiding anymore. Let the monsters do that for a while now, I’m sick of it.”
“Yeah, well, that’s my job, right? I have to admit, it’s nice to hang around for a bit to see what good comes of it.”
“What do you mean?”
She said, “I move fast. My unit and I, we’re usually on to the next mission a couple of hours after the last one is done. I don’t normally get to meet the people we help. All the hanging out I’ve done around here this week is usually the stuff civilian administrators do. I’m a field operative. This sort of thing is, well, kind of unusual for me.”
“That sets up a really good question I want to ask you.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Who are you, Nina Forest?”
“That’s a heck of a question.”
“I’ll bet it is.”
“Just your average girl,” Nina told him. “Let’s see, where to start…well, before all this I flew choppers for the National Guard while I wasn’t fighting bad guys with the Philly SWAT team.”
He laughed. “Seriously? I mean, before all the aliens came, you were already doing the soldier thing?”
“Yeah,” her eyes glazed over. “Since I can remember, it’s always been a part of me.”
“That must be tough.”
“There were times, yeah, when I didn’t quite fit in.”
“And what about nowadays?”
“Nowadays…” she pondered. “I’m still just a soldier. I’m fighting to free people. People like you and Denise.”
“And if I haven’t thanked you in the last five minutes let me do that again now.”
She told him, “You don’t need to thank me. It’s my job.”
Brock said, “I don’t think it’s part of your job to take care of an eleven year old girl overnight; to spend time with her like you did yesterday. That’s above and beyond, I think.
”
Nina felt a twinge of embarrassment. She tried to brush aside his words. “Yeah, well, I was a little girl once, too. But what about you? What were you doing before all this?”
Jim leaned against the railing.
“Me? Well I sure wasn’t with any SWAT teams, I’ll tell you that. I wanted to be a teacher. Elementary school. Couldn’t find any teaching jobs so I did the next best thing: worked in day care. A start, you know?”
She nodded.
“I thought it was just a stepping stone until something opened up in the district. Man, was I right. I did step up.”
A flock of Earth-born sea birds passed overhead. The smell of the smoldering pit had drawn their attention.
“What did you step up to?” Nina asked.
“Den father, I suppose.”
“Or maybe just ‘father’?”
He nodded. “Sort of. In a way. Yeah.”
“Guess you didn’t have your own children.”
Brock shook his head. “No, I was just a kid myself. My whole life ahead of me,” he drifted away for a moment, perhaps revisiting those visions of the future; visions that evaporated in the fire of Armageddon. “I was living the high life. You know, young and single. Nice apartment. No responsibilities.”
“Then came fatherhood,” she said.
“Yeah,” Brock laughed. “Instant family. At first, it was just me and one other older lady, Mildred. Something…something got her on that first day while we were hunkered down in the center hoping parents would start showing up.”
“They never did,” Nina knew.
“Started off with fifteen kids.”
Nina glanced toward Denise and the group of children running around the patio deck. She counted eight of them and did the math, totaling a casualty rate of nearly fifty percent.
Jim told her, “Five of them weren’t even two yet. A couple of the kids were from the center’s day camp, so they were older. You know how I ended up with them? The two counselors in charge of the day camp took off when things went to hell. They told the kids to stay put and they walked out of the room and took off.”
“You have got to be shitting me.”
She saw a red glow in his cheeks, no doubt a memory of the rage he felt when he understood responsible ‘adults’ had abandoned their young charges.
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