Quantum Theorem

by James Wallace

  As I grabbed the rocket we were rocked slightly when the other vehicle hit us with their weapon. I ignored any damage and quickly repeated the procedure with the LAW, this time when I aimed the tracked vehicle was trying to get out of the creek and away from our heavy firepower. Fuck that, the asshole had to die, for nothing more than damaging the Rhino. I aimed low this time on the vehicle and triggered off the rocket. This time the rocket penetrated the armor before exploding. The turret blew off and cartwheeled through the trees.

  Cupcake screeched to a stop, and the team disembarked from the Rhino and fanned out in a protective circle position. I ducked down inside and then out the door and landed in the water next to Apache. I pointed toward the demolished vehicles and pointed to her and me. She nodded her understanding, we moved off together as the team stayed back protecting M.C. and the Rhino.

  I made it to the first vehicle and climbed on board. I investigated the wreckage and found nothing, but yellow body fluid and parts splattered throughout. A shot rang out and a blue energy bolt hit the spot next to me on the tank. I turned and dove off the vehicle, hitting the ground and shoulder rolling to the left coming up with my SCAR mini 14. I shouldn’t have bothered as Apache had already fired upon the Collectivus soldier. I couldn’t see him and figured he had fallen to the ground.

  Apache whistled and pointed to the ground to my right and about ten yards away. I brought the SCAR to my shoulder and moved toward the enemy body. I found it on its back, looking up to the sky. A yellow liquid bled from the shoulder, and another in its chest. I pulled my pistol and fired a single shot into the head of the wounded soldier. Apache had climbed up on the second vehicle and checked inside, finding it clear she climbed down and pointed up into the sky.

  I craned my neck and surveyed the sky. The aircraft was gone, but something told me that it would not be the last time we would see it. I turned and jogged back to the Rhino. We climbed back on board and moved on. We ran into no more trouble as we collected my electric bike and made it to the back field of my property.

  Day 3

  We made it back to my house late that night. The farm looked abandoned from far away, we pulled up outside the gate and disembarked. I was about to open the gate using a manual wheel when I heard a low whistle. I pulled my Glock and spun toward the bushes next to me. A hand came out and stopped my pistol before I could pull it farther then my waist.

  “Relax jefe, it’s just us,” Butch came out of the bushes followed by the rest of his men.

  “How did you guys get here so fast?” I asked.

  “Old Chinese secret.” Chun answered with a chuckle.

  “I thought you were Korean Chun,” the man who resembled Darius Rucker nicknamed Hootie asked.

  Chun turned and gave Hootie a flat look. A Mexican man behind Hootie smacked him in the back of the head and shook his head in exasperation.

  “Thanks Pico.”

  “No problem Chun, I would be happy to duct tape him and leave him out in the fields.”

  “Not right now, but let’s call that plan B.”

  “Have you guys seen any movement in the house since you got here?” I asked Butch.

  “We thought we saw some movement earlier near the garage, but nothing since.”

  “Okay I am going to open the gate and shut down the defenses. I then want you guys to move around to the rear of the house and set up a perimeter defense. No firing on anything that resembles a human. I want anyone human detained.”

  “You got it Jefe.” Butch leaned against a fence post and waited on me.

  I wheeled the gate open and then removed a small remote from my pocket. I punched in a six-digit code and waited for response. The red light on the remote turned green and then blinked three times. The blinking alerted me that zone three was already disengaged. Zone three was a section in the garage. I led my team down the long driveway and to the open space between the garage and house. I turned to my people and sent off the twins and Kot to clear the house and took the rest with me into the garage. I opened the side door and stopped as a gun barrel was stuck against my head.

  “You picked the wrong place to fuck with asshole,” a man’s rough deep voice explained to me.

  I moved quick sideways and down, my hand shot up shoving my finger into the trigger guard and blocking the gun from being fired. Apache moved in behind me and pushed the barrel of her mini 14 under the man’s chin.

  “Boss? Shit I thought you would’ve announced yourself.”

  I stood up and let go of the man’s gun. “Damn Bri, did you forget everything I taught you? You don’t hide behind the door; you might have had the drop on me but the person behind me would’ve killed you.”

  “About that, can you call Joan of Arc here, off?” Bri asked with Apache’s gun still firmly planted under his chin.

  I turned to Apache and waved her off. She lowered her gun and moved in farther allowing Heaven and Cupcake to enter and check the security of the garage. They didn’t know about the secret bunker I had installed underground before pouring the concrete floor covering it up.

  “Everyone okay?” I asked Bri.

  “Yeah Boss, got the kids and some other survivors we found on our way here. Johnson is down there now.” Bri turned and moved off to the stairs leading up to the loft. He stopped and lifted the first step riser.

  I bent over and reached inside the riser and pulled a red handle. The third step, along with the rest of the steps above it moved upward, like the staircase in the TV show the Munsters. I signaled Apache and Cupcake to stay in the garage and defend while I took Heaven and Bri inside the cramped bunker. The inside of the stairs had another set of stairs leading down into an inky black void. We continued downward, as we went LED lights set in the walls came on giving enough light to see a thick steel door set inside a meter concrete thick wall. I opened the plastic cover and punched in the code to open the door. Three shorts beeps let me know the code was accepted and the door was now unlocked. I gripped the metal handles and pulled the door open. It had been hung perfectly and balanced on its hinges. I stepped over the metal lip and inside a small circular bunker. The place was packed to the top with people. I did a quick count and stopped at ten, the bunker was designed for three to live in comfortably for a week. These people had to have felt like sardines tightly packed in a tin can. I felt for them, but being uncomfortable was leaps and bounds better than imprisonment and turned into a blank slate.

  Johnson came over to me and gave me a big hug. “Nice to see you, cameback Boss.”

  “Round up the civilians, I have an armored vehicle outside that is going to take them to a very secure place.”

  “What place is that?”

  “A place surrounded by mean, dangerous, armed men and women. Now get them upstairs,” I spun on my heels and moved up and out of the bunker. I had a guerilla war to plan.

  In twenty minutes, the Rhino was packed to the gills with kids and parents. Athena elected to stay and sent her daughter and friend to the Malleus bunker. Athena was an asset, even though she was never in the military, she had paid strict attention when I trained her and her daughter on guns the year before. She was a natural with my MK14. I put her on the top of the garage with Kot and had them provide overwatch while the rest of us got down to planning.

  “Chun, I want you and your merry bunch of killers to recon the town and find out what you can concerning the Collectivus personnel. They are amassing people in Watson Park before they send them into their realm. I need to know how they are transporting them, how do they prepare them, and how many Collectivus guards do they have in the park. All that jazz. I also want to know where they have their main command center and keep a lookout for Kell. Do not kill any Collectivus personnel with her. One might be my new friend Quashay.”

  “Not a problem, we are all trained for this kind of sneak and peak. What is our ROE?” Chun enquired.

  “Your rules for engagement are the same for any Malleus ops. Fire only if fired upon but let me add an addendum
. If they look like they are going to kill someone try and stop them without being found out.”

  “We can do that. Radio procedures?”

  “Tac channel four standard encryption. If they seem to be figuring it out, we will have to adapt. For now, we stick with what we know.”

  “Roger,” he pulled back the cover on his watch and checked the time. “It’s oh-three-hundred now. We will report every two hours,” Chun turned to Butch and motioned him with his chin to move out.

  “We will try and bolster the ranch’s defenses more and make us too strong of a target for the Collectivus army to hit us.”

  “Outstanding, consider us gone,” Chun turned and walked out into the dim early morning light.

  I turned to Howser and Hunter, the twins. “I need you to figure out how to drive the enemy into firing lanes if they show up to take us on. I don’t want to just give them a bloody nose, I want to scare them so much they shudder when they think of us.”

  “We have some ideas. We saw the small cache of det cord and Semtex explosives you had in your mini armory. I ain’t even going to ask where you came up with it.”

  “Good, don’t ask, and I won’t need to lie to you. You and your brother do whatever you need to do, just get the ranch secured.”

  The two brothers started arguing over tactics as they left the garage. I turned to Johnson and Bri regarding them for a moment. “We are going to hang out here and do some heavy lifting to get this place as locked down as possible. Once we started hitting the Collectivus they are gonna come looking for us.”

  “I’ll start cooking food for the masses. We are going to need more supplies, if we are gonna start taking in refugees.” Johnson started rolling up the sleeves of his denim button up shirt.

  “Look in the basement of the house, Kell canned a shit load of food and I have a ton of Venison jerky. We have a small herd of cattle and two dairy cows. We will have plenty of protein but are going to need veggies once we run out,” I scratched my head as a plan came to me.

  “I know that look, it is either the I have an idea. Or I have to take a shit look.” Bri said.

  “I don’t have to take a shit, but I do have a plan,” I held up a finger and called over my radio. “Cupcake can you hear me? Over.”

  A moment passed before he came back. “Yeah, what do you want? Over.”

  I shook my head as I chuckled. The man always got to the point. “Keep eyes open for Semi trucks hauling food. Over.”

  Another moment went by before he answered. “Let me get this straight. You want me to stop at every Semi I see and check to see if it is carrying food? Over.”

  “No! you Plebe, just mark any Semi you see on a map. I will send a patrol out to check on them. Over.”

  “That makes more sense, and I have already been doing that. By the way on I48 about five clicks East there is a cattle truck on the side of the road. I saw movement in the trailer. You might want to hurry if you want those beauties alive. Over.”

  “Thanks for the heads up, hurry and drop those people off and get your Polish ass back here. Over.”

  “You better have cold beer for me when I get back. Over.”

  “A whole case for you. Over.” I turned to Apache and smiled at her.

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Am I about to go for a stroll out to I-48?”

  “No.” I said.

  “Oh good, cause this girl is tired as balls.”

  “Find a second gear girl, because we are going for a stroll out to I-48 East.” I laughed at her.

  “I am going to make you pay for this, you know, that right?”

  “I’ve been paying for it, since you came onto the team,” I winked.

  Apache flipped me off as she blew me a kiss and wink. “No better time than now to move on.”

  I grabbed my mini 14 and picked my pack off the floor. I pointed to Johnson, “You get to be the adult while I’m gone. Keep Bri from stripping naked and going full Sasquatch. If he becomes too much a problem, call his wife down, she will rub his tummy and calm him down.”

  “She scratches more than my tummy,” Bri smiled.

  “No one is interested into your wife’s bestiality fetish,” Johnson quipped dryly.

  I left the garage as the two started calling each other names like two eight-year-old kids. Apache and I trotted out to the back acreage of my property. I pointed toward the rear fence. Apache nodded, and we hurdled it side by side. We picked up our pace and were soon running at a good clip. We ran about six klicks before we came within sight of the Semi-Truck. As we were running we saw one of those tracked vehicles that the Collectivus used. We dove to the ground and rolled into a small trench. I landed on Apache and knocked the wind out of her. I rolled onto my side and allowed her to pull in a deep breath.

  She rabbit-punched me in the stomach. It didn’t really hurt me as I have a rock-hard flat stomach. We skirted to the edge of the trench and peered through our rifle’s scopes at the tracked vehicle. It had stopped on the road, its turret spun in our direction and stopped.

  “Think they can see us?” Apache asked.

  I was about to respond when the ground around us erupted in a shower of rocks and dirt. We slid back to the bottom of the trench and started crawling away from the constant fire from the tank. We kept moving till we came face to face with the end of the trench. We had no heavy weapons, nothing that we could fire on the tank that it couldn’t shrug off. We had to come up with a plan before we got picked off. I looked down at Apache, her face was a mask of fury. I climbed up the trench and took a quick peak before dropping back down. What I saw was bad news. The single tank was joined by another and both were on their way in our direction. One would fire while the other moved, we would never get a shot at them even if we had a heavy weapon.

  I was about to climb back up the trench and provide covering fire, giving Apache the time to hopefully escape when a loud explosion caught my attention. I flinched and then risked climbing back up the trench to see what was going on. I poked my head up and saw one tank engulfed in flames, as the other was trying to evade down the field. A black armored helicopter was in the air and tracking the tank. The helicopter was insect looking, long with two cockpits, one down low the other behind the first and set higher up. Stubby wings stuck out on each side; a wicked looking Cannon slung under the chin of the helicopter. I identified the helicopter as an AH-64 Boeing Apache. It was doing the job it had been designed for, killing tanks.

  The second tank didn’t make it far, as the Apache fired off a Hellfire missile. The tank disappeared in a shower of sparks and smoke. I stood up and waved my arms and hands over my head trying to get the pilot’s attention. The gunner, who sat in the front lower cockpit turned his head toward me and waved. The helicopter rotated in the air for a moment and then settled down the fifty feet to the ground. It landed on its two-wheel landing gear up front and then the tail settled on its single wheel. The blades continued to turn but slowed as the front cockpit opened. I jogged bent over toward the Apache and shouted up to the gunner.

  “Thank you for your help!” I yelled up.

  “We were in the neighborhood and saw these two things firing at you. Thought we should lend an assist.” The gunner took their helmet off and shouted back down to me. Oops he’s a her, I thought to myself; shouldn’t be so presumptuous in the future.

  “What unit are you with? What are your orders?” I shouted back.

  “1st Battalion, 211th Attack Reconnaissance Battalion Guard unit out of Utah.”

  “What the hell are you guys doing so far from home?”

  “We were out here on a training mission when all hell broke loose. We were armed to the teeth and our Colonel told us to scatter and get the hell out. So, we have no new orders and without our GPS or Nav systems working we are lost as fuck.” The gunner shouted down at me.

  “I am a part of a Mercenary group called Malleus. We are out of two places. One is my ranch just past those two fields West. The other is our bunker farther away. If y
ou want, you can throw your lot in with us.”

  The gunner spoke through her microphone and explained the situation to her pilot. He shrugged his shoulders and then nodded. The gun under the helicopter moved up and down in unison with his head.

  “Sounds like we would be happy to join in with your ragtag group. What is your mission right now?”

  “We are trying to secure that semi filled with cattle.”

  The gunner turned her head to take in the semi. “We can provide air cover and follow you back if you have room for us at your ranch.”

  “You can park that bad boy behind the red barn. Once we can find fuel and ordinance you can operate from there.”

  “Okie dokie. What do we call you?”

  “Call me Dan.”

  “Okay Dan. Think your comm’s gear can work with ours?”

  I nodded my head affirmatively, as I had tested it while out of country. We could listen in on flight operations no matter where we were. The gunner wrote something down on a piece of paper and handed it to me. I plugged the info into my radio and showed it to Apache, so she could do the same. I gave the pilot the okay sign with my fingers and backed away from the helicopter to give it room to take off.

  As Apache and I jogged toward the semi we were assaulted by the smell of the cattle. I placed my hand against the side of the trailer as I walked toward the front of the semi. The cattle were spooked but seemed in good condition from what I could tell. The cab of the semi seemed fine, the driver’s door was wide open, but the cab was empty from what we could see. I climbed up on the sidestep and looked into the sleeper. It was empty, but a mess, as if someone had been dragged out of it.