Beyond

by Phil Maxey

  He ran forward, looking down the scope of his rifle. “There’s something chasing the drone!”

  Wyatt immediately closed his eyes and the dark shape which was closing in on the drone peeled away. “I got it.” He said opening them.

  Zach patted him on the back. “Good going.” He then waved for the other soldiers to come towards him. Soon they were nearby. “Everyone pull back to the wall outside the hospital, we need to protect the control station on the roof for at least the next hour.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Abbey looked out of the third floor apartment window to the group of E.L.F’s in the street below. Some of the Cascaders creatures were standing and sitting. The cat like creature was there, its golden fur glistening in the early morning sun. She begun to wonder which E.L.F belonged to which Cascader, and if she could guess just by looking at the human or the creature.

  Closing her eyes she tried to sense those around her, human and beast alike. She wanted to know roughly how many Cascaders there were, but more importantly she wanted to know if Clovis was already there. After a few moments, she had sensed about forty Cascaders, luckily none of them with her foes signature.

  She turned and looked at the small bedroom she had been told to stay in. It was pleasant enough, with a single bed, some cupboards and a television although that was redundant in this new world.

  The sound of wood creaking came from beyond the door, then came a knock.

  “Are you decent?” Said the man she had met a few hours earlier.

  “Yes.”

  The door opened and in walked the noble looking man who had the dinosaur as a pet. He had a tray with some tinned fruit in a bowl and a glass of what looked like fresh orange juice.

  “It’s not much, but you can’t exactly run down to the local store anymore, can you.”

  She smiled as he put the tray down on a small table.

  He looked at the still well kept bed. “Did you sleep?”

  “I laid on top. Got a few hours.” She lied.

  “I just realized you don’t know my name. I am Erin Santiago of Irish and Hispanic stock.” He held out his hand.

  It was a flamboyant way to announce who you were she thought, but briefly shook his hand anyway.

  He leaned up against the doorframe. “How long have you been a coach…I mean a Cascader?”

  The word ‘coach’ struck a distant cord in her mind, but she couldn’t quite place it.

  She looked down at the food and drink and calculated it would be a hard way to try to kill her. She took a sip of the juice. “Few months I guess…you?”

  “Since early on. So how did you find—” The walls and floor of the room shuddered. “—Don’t mind that, we are doing some excavating.” He smiled. “You just happened to be passing? And sensed us?”

  A number of scenarios that she could try ran threw her mind in a matter of seconds. “Do you know a man called Clovis?”

  Erin’s eyes widened slightly. “What of him?”

  “It’s a long story, but we have history. He wants me dead. Infact I just came from fighting him in central Boston.” Abbey could see Erin’s expression harden, and she began to plot what item around her she could use as a weapon.

  “And why does he want that?”

  “You still haven’t told me if you know him…”

  “I do. Why does he want you dead?”

  “I don’t know what he’s told you of his past—”

  “Not much.”

  “—Okay well, he used to be working for a group called the Hell Fire gang…”

  Abbey spent the next few minutes, laying out Clovis’s role in her life over the past few months, but altered a few facts as she was talking. When she finished her story, she tried reading the mans face in front of her, but couldn’t find any indication of what he was thinking. Instead, he just nodded.

  “Did you kill him, in this battle?”

  “I don’t think so. Actually I thought he might have come back here.”

  “Ah… you came here to try to kill him again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It would seem if he does return, then we would have quite a situation on our hands. But from what you have told me, if it is true, then he has no good reason to harm you, just a few bad ones.” Erin moved closer. “Unless there is no other choice we do not kill our own.”

  “That’s umm good.”

  “Also I am sorry to hear of this Zach’s death. You obviously shared a lot, even if he could not have truly understood you…”

  Abbey let the lie hang in the air and nodded.

  * * * * *

  Bower and Zach stood near the wall on the roof of the hospital and looked out to the surrounding streets at the E.L.F’s that were amassing.

  “Going to be interesting when we need to leave,” said Bower.

  “I’m sure Wyatt, Miles and Diaz will handle it. They have too.”

  The lieutenant, who had been flying the drone for the past forty-five minutes over Connecticut then Massachusetts, looked over his shoulder at his two commanding officers. “We are almost at the target location.”

  Zach took one last look down at the nervous looking soldiers behind the sandbags and car barricade and joined Bower watching the screen on the control device.

  “I have to admit, I’m impressed this box of wires actually worked. The nerds back at the camp put it together so we could use the drone on the road. I never thought it’d work,” said Bower.

  “We are passing over the Boston camp’s walls now, sir.”

  Zach and Bower leant in closer.

  The devastation which befell the camp was obvious from the air. The walls which had withstood so much punishment in Texas, here laid in ruins with huge pieces missing revealing jagged edges.

  “Maybe they were destroyed but I’m not seeing many gun emplacements,” said Bower. Zach nodded.

  As the drone left the walls behind and pushed further inland, what were once forests were now wastelands, of flattened and snapped trees. Amongst the stumps new green was emerging while E.L.F’s, some alone, others in groups walked across the fields and roads. Where buildings once stood only the foundations remained.

  Zach shook his head.

  “They never stood a chance,” said Fiona just behind him.

  “Expanding their bunkers was a good call,” said Zach. He looked down at the lieutenant. “How far until it gets to the town?”

  “Not long, few more minutes, sir.”

  A roar echoed around the buildings around them. Zach went to move back to the wall, when Fiona put her hand on his arm. “You stick with this, I’ll sort any monster problems.”

  He smiled and she moved away to the roof exit.

  “That’s it coming up, to the north east, sir.”

  A group of buildings and the signs of urban planning started to appear beyond the nearest hills. They leaned in closer.

  “I’m seeing some movement, sir,” said the lieutenant.

  The drone moved across the streets and industrial areas on the outskirts of the town.

  “Can you zoom in on the center of town? Looks like there’s something down there…” Said Zach.

  The soldier did as asked and groups of people could be seen standing in the streets surrounded by E.L.F’s and large craters.

  “Will they see the drone?”

  “If they are looking in that direction perhaps, it’s more likely they will hear it.”

  “So we might not have long then.”

  “They look pretty concentrated in the center of the town,” said Bower.

  “Can we get in closer? I want to see their faces,” said Zach.

  “I can bring it down to a lower altitude but it increases the chance it will be destroyed.”

  “Do it,” said Zach.

  After a few adjustments the view from the drone clearly showed individuals and their creatures. A bird monkey E.L.F beat its wings while perched on top of a truck. A twinge of recognition ran through Zach’s mind which he
instantly ignored.

  “That’s a whole lot of Cascaders,” said Bower. “An outright assault is not going to be an option, not unless we had a platoon or two.”

  They both studied the feed.

  “We just need to pull them away from the bunker entrances and allow those in the bunkers a way to get their own forces to the—” Any further words froze in his mind. He moved forward almost putting his pointed finger on the small screen. “That woman, can you get in closer on her face.”

  The lieutenant did as asked and Abbey’s face filled almost the entire screen.

  Zach fell back as if he had been hit. That can’t be her. Why is she there? With them? A hundred questions had flooded all other thoughts before Bower looked back at him.

  “She’s probably being held hostage Zach, we don’t know anything,” said the older man.

  Zach slowly walked forward towards the woman that left him, then the screen went black. The soldier brought up a diagnostics screen, with charts and numbers.

  “What happened? Where she’d go?” Said Zach.

  The soldier typed away at a small keyboard. “We’ve lost the signal. We’re not receiving any data…I think the drone was destroyed.”

  Zach turned away in frustration.

  Bower looked at him. “This is a good thing. Now we know where she is.”

  Zach shook his head, still not quite believing what he had just seen. “Pack everything up, I want to be back on the road within the hour…and get a message to Mitchell, tell her we’re coming.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Abbey watched as the creature that killed the young man from the bunker a few days earlier, slipped into a fifteen-foot square hole in the middle of the parking lot.

  A scrawny looking man, standing near the rim of the crater waved his clenched fist in the air. “Go on boy! You get’em!” He looked up at Abbey across the street and sneered.

  “Hi?”

  Abbey turned around. A gaunt looking young man stood looking awkward on the sidewalk. “Hi…”

  “How long you been with Erin’s people?”

  “I’m not…umm not long. You?”

  He smiled nervously, slowly walking up to her. “Oh, I’m not, I’m with another group.”

  “Cascaders?”

  Any semblance of a smile left his face as he shook his head. “One of us is…” He looked up at the bird monkey E.L.F on the nearby roof of a truck. “You are?”

  Abbey smiled. “That’s Mo. So that would be a yes.”

  They both looked at the carnage that had been done to what remained of the ground of the town around them. “Do you know why they are doing so much digging? What’s down there?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well I better get on with trying to find some food for the others.”

  She smiled and then instantly felt a kind of numbness in her mind. He’s here. She spun around trying to see if Clovis was within eyeshot, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  The young man saw the change in Abbey’s demeanor and looked puzzled. “You okay?” His attention was then drawn to something over her shoulder. “Bryan…”

  She turned around. A few hundred yards further down the street a car pulled up, with a six-legged bear E.L.F running behind it. Two men got out. One she recognized immediately. She stepped back into the doorway of a store and watched as Clovis was helped from a pickup truck, by a man in his fifties. There were a number of dark patches of red on Clovis’s clothes. A few other people ran to both of them, and then they moved through the doorway and into a plain looking office building.

  “Sorry, I have to go,” said the young man, running in the direction Abbey was looking.

  He’s injured, this is my chance…But what will Erin and his people do to me if I kill him? Does he sense I’m here?

  She hesitated in the door-well, not knowing if this was the right moment or not. ‘We don’t kill our own, unless we have no choice…’ Erin’s words echoed in her mind. She didn’t care about that, but she wasn’t prepared for a suicide mission if Erin took Clovis’s side.

  She took one last look at the building the two men and then the younger one entered and began walking away, back in the direction of the hill which she ran down the night before.

  She could feel the eyes of the balding man near the large crater following her across the parking lot, and she was relieved once she had moved down an alleyway and out of his view. Erin didn’t seem to see her as a threat, that was good but it was obvious she wasn’t trusted by many of the others.

  She crossed another small street lined with stores, then ran onto the road which led to the hill. Mo circled high above keeping an eye on things.

  Soon she was back where she had started the journey the night before, walking up the drive to the large broken house. The front door opened and Raj appeared.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “I needed to make contact. Find out what the situation was. I did that…and umm Clovis is down there.”

  “What?! Does he know you’re here?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Raj looked at the trees around the house anxiously. “I couldn’t leave! Without your protection I’m marooned here!”

  She looked down. “I know I’m sorry, I just thought if you knew I was going, you would want to argue and I didn’t have time for that. Let’s go inside.”

  They both walked into the large hallway and then into the living room which was surprisingly untouched considering just a few yards away the outside wall was completely missing.

  Raj sat on the arm of a sofa. “So what’s the plan? What did you find down there?”

  “There’s a man in charge called Erin. Most are Cascaders and they are trying to get into the bunkers. I don’t know if they have succeeded.”

  “We can’t stay here! We need to find a way back to the outpost.”

  Abbey shook her head, pacing around the room. “I don’t think this Erin is all bad. He seems like someone who wants the best for the Cascaders.”

  “And what about the rest of us? And why is Clovis there? Is he working with this guy?”

  “I don’t know. I just know that I can’t leave. If they manage to get into the bunkers, maybe I can persuade them to have a ceasefire or something.”

  “Do you even know why they are trying—”

  The sound of gravel being crunched came from outside, followed by Mo squawking somewhere in the sky above the house.

  Abbey ran back to the front door and looked through the small panes of glass. Raj appeared behind her. They both watched as two men that she didn’t recognize got out of a pickup.

  “They followed you!” Said Raj looking around at the best place to hide.

  “No…I…Maybe. Stay here I’ll take care of it.” She went to open the front door when another sound came from the kitchen. They both turned around and a thickset man was standing with a gun in his hand.

  “Mr. Santiago wants you to come with us.”

  The short ride back into town, ended at the public library. An impressive neoclassical revival building which was mostly still standing.

  Raj and Abbey exchanged a brief glance before getting out, while Mo landed on the street nearby and started to flap his wings while growling.

  One of the men stood outside the car. “Mr. Santiago says to make sure you control your creature.”

  Abbey went to enquire why she would need to do that, but thought better of it, as the man had his hand on a handgun. She nodded while sending a mental message to her pet for him to calm down. Mo lowered his wings but still stamped around on the concrete.

  The men led the way up the stone steps and through the large arched doors, finally opening double doors to the main room of the library, which was packed with people. They immediately hushed.

  Abbey and Raj walked forward into cavernous space slowly, looking at the faces studying them. On the second floor balcony, Erin stood looking down. He briefly nodded to the men with the guns, who closed the doo
rs behind them.

  Abbey looked up. “Why have you brought me here? I thought I wasn’t a prisoner?” She noticed the sneering man from earlier was standing beside him.

  “Who’s this?” Said Erin looking at Raj.

  “My friend.”

  “He’s not like us, I can tell. Why do you care about him?”

  “Like I say, he’s a friend. I protect my—”

  “Remember what I said about a difficult situation if a particular man returns? Well he did and it is.”

  The doors opened once again and all eyes including Raj’s and Abbeys turned to the open space where Clovis now stood.

  “You…” He growled, but he wasn’t looking at Abbey, he was looking at Raj. He went to walk forward.

  “You know this man?” Said Erin from above.

  Clovis looked up through the strands of hair that were still stuck with clots of blood to his forehead. “He’s a scientist from the camp. He experimented on us.”

  A ripple of discomfort ran around those watching.

  “Us?”

  “Cascaders!” Shouted Clovis.

  Abbey and Raj moved closer together, bumping shoulders, while looking at all the angry eyes around them. She went to say something when Raj stepped away.

  “Yeah I did and what of it!” He looked at Abbey next to him, who’s eyes were trying to communicate what her mouth couldn’t say.

  Raj continued, looking between Abbey and Erin. “She’s not my friend! I told her to come down here, to find out inform—” He fell to the ground. Behind him stood a woman from the crowd with a heavy looking piece of wood in her hand.

  “Get away from him!” Shouted Abbey pushing the woman away. She dropped to the ground trying to see where the blood was coming from on his head, which was forming a pool on the tiled wooden floor.

  Clovis started limping forward. “Now it’s your turn b—”

  The distant clatter of gunfire mixing with the screeches of E.L.F’s echoed around the street outside. Clovis stopped, frustrated, then joined the others looking at the opening doors.