Sully looks around, white hair visible underneath his helmet. His eyes are dark and unblinking. “Didn’t like it back then. Used to have nightmares about it. Now it seems like a goddamn summer vacation.”
Nobody says anything to that, and the convoy moves along. A couple of horns blare, and the convoy starts moving at different speeds, braking, swerving, slowing down and speeding up. De Los Santos sees my expression and says, “If we don’t got time to hide out from the killer stealth satellites, we keep hauling ass and swerve around, try to screw up their targeting.”
“It works, then?”
“We’re still here, ain’t we?” A couple of soldiers near De Los Santos laugh, but not Sully. His hands are tight on his M-4.
The road narrows and there’s so much overgrowth and trees growing overhead that I can’t tell where we’re going, or what’s behind the tree line. Could be a bunch of farms or small towns or whatever, but the green stuff grows fast when there’s no more landscaping or highway departments around to trim it back.
A honk of horns from up ahead. We pass a faded yellow sign, with black letters faded to gray. BRIDGE AHEAD. A bolt has come loose and the sign hangs at an angle, which is okay, I guess, for it’s no longer accurate.
There’s no more bridge ahead.
It’s been freshly dropped into a deep river valley, and there’s only one explanation:
Creepers.
Chapter Eleven
I get out and walk over to the command Humvee, where a map has been spread out, and Captain Wallace, Dad, and First Sergeant Hesketh are talking.
While looking at her map, the captain shakes her head and says, “Well, we’ve just lost the best route back to Rome and Battalion.” Wallace folds up the map and looks at the dropped bridge. “Between them destroying Vee’s place, and knocking this bridge down, those buggy bastards are beginning to get on my nerves. First Sergeant.”
“Ma’am,” he says in his raspy voice.
“Get the platoon leaders over there. We need to get this convoy turned around and headed…well, headed up to the next main intersection, where Route 113 crosses over. We might run out of fuel before we get to Battalion, but we’ll be close enough to hump it in if we have to.”
“Captain,” Dad says.
“Colonel,” she briskly replies, folding up her map.
“With this latest development, I strongly recommend that you deploy your unit to Griffis,” he says. “Check your map, the location of battalion HQ and the Air Force base are nearly the same distance apart.”
“True, Colonel, but at least I know when I’m running out of fuel and provisions outside of Battalion, I’ll have friendly faces waiting for me when I walk in. I can’t guarantee the same for Griffis.”
“Ma’am, I believe the right decision is—”
“—not going to Griffis,” she says, handing over her map to First Sergeant Hesketh. “We roll in there, we might get a smile or two and a dry corner in an empty warehouse to sack out, but as far as fuel and other supplies…paperwork will have to be filled out, requisitions processed, and maybe some command-level bickering and decision-making. And a week or two later, then we’ll be able to move. Ain’t gonna happen.”
“Captain—”
“Colonel, this convoy is moving out. If you don’t want to walk or borrow a courier bicycle, I suggest you climb into the nearest Humvee.”
The command Humvee is the closest, but Dad’s eyes are flashing behind his brand-new Army-issued eyeglasses, and he says, “Captain, I believe there’s an opening in the lead Stryker for a passenger. You’ll find me there.”
“Very well,” she says, and Wallace sees I’m still standing there, and I quickly get the hell out.
* * *
There’s a quick mess of maneuvering and backing up and making turns, but K Company, “Kara’s Killers,” are back on the road, reversing course away from the destroyed bridge. De Los Santos settles in with a grunt and says, “Quick reaction force my ass, all we’re doing is going around in circles.”
In the back, the old soldier—Sully—laughs and says, “When my uncle joined up, last century, the Army promised him he could see the world. Guess he never expected that one of these days, another world would come to see us.”
Big laughs at that. Up overhead more sparkles and flares of light as space debris reenters the Earth’s atmosphere, burning up.
The convoy picks up speed. Clouds move in. All about us are abandoned homes and farms. Lots of survivors picked up and moved in closer to villages and towns, for better defense at night, when the Coasties came out, or when hungry neighbors decided to raid not-so-hungry neighbors.
We dodge some old wreckage. A Greyhound bus, pulled over to the side, rusting bullet holes in the side, tires long ago flattened, all the windows gone. I’m pretty sure it’s apparent what happened there, years back. A bus full of refugees, not stopping when told to, and then a firefight.
Nobody on the truck says anything as we go by.
Rain starts, gentle at first, and then comes down pretty steady. Some groans as we all retrieve our rain gear, and Thor stands up all fours, standing still.
He starts to whine.
Balatnic says, “Your pup doesn’t like rain?”
“No, it’s not that,” I say.
Thor is tense, trembling. His whining increases. I take in our surroundings. Low rock walls, some brush, and empty fields on either side that look like they might be mowed occasionally for hay.
Barking now.
I get up. “Creeper sign. We got Creepers nearby.”
The soldiers look up at me, and they go for their weapons, and somebody up forward shouts to the driver.
“Creepers!”
“Hey, we got Creeper sign!”
“Pull the truck over, pull it over!”
The truck is rattling and shaking, and I push my way to the cab, holding onto the side so I don’t fall on my ass. Thor is behind me, barking frantically, and I hang over the side and yell in at the driver, “We got Creeper sign! Pull it over!”
A young soldier, thirteen or so, the steering wheel enormous against his skinny chest. “No! I got orders! Keep up with the Humvee in front of me!”
“Pull it over!”
“No!”
It takes some maneuvering and I almost drop the damn thing over the side, but I get my Beretta out and shove it against the driver’s ear.
“Now or I take your head off!” I yell. “And signal the convoy we got Creeper sign!”
For such a young soldier he has an impressive collection of obscenities, and he brakes hard, jogging us over to the side of the wet road. He pounds the horn and the tail gate rattles down, and the First Platoon jumps down, and they look to me and I say, “First Squad, take position across the road, behind the stone wall. Second Squad, this side of the road is all yours.”
I rush forward, slap the side of the driver’s door and say, “Move it! Get this truck out of here!”
In front of us and behind us, other vehicles of the convoys have stopped. The rear Stryker has halted, other soldiers are starting to deploy and, following the First Platoon’s lead, are setting up skirmish lines behind the stone walls. Sergeant Bronson runs up to me and screams, “Who the hell told you to pull your truck over? And who the hell told you to take command?”
I push by him, heading to the command Humvee. “Question one, my dog Thor. Question two, check in with me later.”
He grabs my shoulder and I spin by him, and Thor is now barking hard, and I say, “Hunt, Thor, hunt!”
He races by me, and even with bandages and a cast on one leg, he scales the stone wall, heads out into the field. Bronson yells at me, “Your damn dog’s gone crazy! There’s nothing out there!”
I race ahead, getting to the command Humvee, and Captain Wallace is out, binoculars in hand, and sees me approaching and it looks like she’s conflicted about a lot of things, but she just says, “Report.”
“My K-9 unit detects Creeper sign.”
“Close?”
“Very close,” I say. “He’s out in that field right now.”
Thor is racing across the field, going parallel to the road. Nothing else is in sight. The tall blonde woman lieutenant—MORNEAU—says, “Looks like a false sign. There’s nothing over there.”
I say, “Thor doesn’t react to false signs.”
The lieutenant gives me a smug look. She’s probably all of eighteen. “Always a first time.”
“Not with Thor,” I say.
First Sergeant Hesketh says, “Ma’am?”
She really gives me a hard look and says, “Skirmish lines, up and down the road. Evacuate all vehicles except the Strykers. Make it standard, First Sergeant.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replies, and the older lieutenant shakes her head at me and heads to her platoon, and in a few minutes, the trucks and Humvees have scampered back down the road, leaving the company and two Strykers.
Rain is coming down heavier.
Thor is still out there, running back and forth, back and forth.
Wallace says quietly, “Eager dog you’ve got there, Sergeant Knox.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I hear you’re the one that stopped us here, and you even deployed First Platoon, and not Sergeant Bronson. True?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She says, “Seems like you and your dog share an eagerness quotient. Get the hell back to First Platoon.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, and I spot Dad, standing by himself, a pistol in his hand, looking pretty damn lost. I run back to the First Platoon and Sergeant Bronson comes up to me and whispers harshly, “Just wait ’til the end of the day, Knox.”
“You and I are still walking and breathing around then, Bronson, you got it.”
I join the other soldiers in a shallow ditch, up against a stone wall, overgrown with grass and moss. The rain is coming down heavier. They look scared, wet, hungry and…scared. No brave thin red line here. And speaking of brave, their platoon leader is with the Second Squad, on the other side of the road, opposite the field where Thor is running back and forth, making a ruckus.
Up the line there’s movement as Second Platoon prepares and I say, “Balatnic, how far off is my dog?”
She raises her head a bit. “About twenty-five meters, Sergeant.”
“First Squad, those with M-10s, cycle in for twenty-five meters, load up. Those with M-4s, make sure you’re locked and loaded.”
I remove a cartridge, spin the base to twenty-five meters, load up, and wait, the barrel of my M-10 on top of the stone wall.
Thor is barking hysterically, sitting at one point. Somebody whispers, “Somebody shut that dog up.”
I whisper back, “You shut up. That dog is saving your life.”
I hear “Prove—” and I’m sure the second word was going to be “it,” but it doesn’t get that far as Thor leaps back and the ground opens up. An enormous flap of dirt and grass is propelled back into the air, like the lid of a giant buried cardboard box, and a damn Battle Creeper emerges, firing bursts of flame from one weaponized arm, and green laser pulses from the other.
I yell, “First Squad, hold your fire!” and by God, these well-trained troopers do just that, while up the line, there’s a roar of heavy thuds as M-10 rounds are fired, along with a fast burst of M-4 fire, and gas envelops the Creeper, which gets off a few more bursts before it collapses to the ground, giving enough room for a second Battle Creeper hidden behind it, which explodes out of the hole, damn near flying, and I yell, “First Squad, fire, fire, fire!”
While the other squads and platoons are desperately reloading, we manage to get off a ragged volley that doesn’t nail the Creeper right away, but does cripple it as it lands on the ground, some of its legs collapsing underneath it. An articulated arm rotates, firing off brief bursts of laser fire, and then it, too, dies, shaking and quivering and tumbling into a mess.
A yell from up the line. “There’s another one!”
And like before, another dirt and grass flap lid flies away, and this Creeper is the Research bug, and doesn’t attack, fight or do anything threatening. It just scampers across the field, at a damn fine rate of speed, and then leaps over a far stone wall, and then is gone.
The rain is still heavy, thinning out the gas clouds that had killed the two Battle Creepers.
De Los Santos moves near me. “That was an ambush.”
“Sure was.”
“Never knew Creepers could bury themselves like that.”
“Me neither.”
Thor has stopped barking, and prances around the field, giving off pleased little yelps, happy his dopey human friends finally understood what he was trying to tell us. I stand up and look across the field, at the two dead Creepers. Up at the other end of the line, something is burning, for there’s thick black smoke billowing up.
“Thor, come!” I call out, and he trots back to us, limping some because of his cast-enclosed leg, and he tries to get over the stone wall, doesn’t quite make it, and before I can move over, two soldiers—Sully and a young woman named Price—scramble over the stone wall and help him out. His head is rubbed and so is the unbandaged part of his back, and a runner approaches and says, “Captain Wallace’s compliments, Sergeant Knox, but she wants to see you, straight away.”
“You got it.”
* * *
When I get up the line, I see where the smoke’s coming from: the lead Stryker looks like it took a burst of flame and two of its tires are burned and damaged. There’s a group of soldiers around it, arguing, probably trying to figure out what to do next. Captain Wallace is walking across the field, accompanied by Dad and First Sergeant Hesketh, and I scramble to catch up, with a heavy breathing Thor right behind me. She hears the slop-slop-slop of my boot falls in the wet field and turns and says, “That’s some dog you have.”
“That’s right, ma’am.”
“None of us heard any clicking sound, or smelled cinnamon. But your dog knew there was an ambush waiting for us.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good thing you listened to him, and nobody else.”
I don’t know how to answer that, so I don’t. We move across the field, and I take a moment to reload the M-10, dialing down the cartridge to the lowest setting. It’s been a strange couple of days, with Creepers digging and Creepers flying, and it wouldn’t surprise me too much if these little bastards were just faking it.
“Well,” Wallace says. “Colonel, you being in Intelligence and all, mind telling us what the hell just happened here?”
“We dodged an ambush,” he said.
“Very good, Colonel, a stunning grasp of the obvious.”
A sweet little insult, but Dad either didn’t hear that, or doesn’t care. He’s too busy. He’s examining the joints and legs of the second Creeper, getting too close for my comfort, and I whisper, “Dad, not so damn close, okay?”
But he’s doing a pretty good job of ignoring me as well. He scrambles up for a second, the rain streaking his hair and fogging up his glasses, and then he jumps back down and instantly falls on his ass. First Sergeant Hesketh laughs and then tries to hide it. Wallace helps up Dad and he says, “Captain, do you have a camera with your unit?”
“No.”
“All right then, a sketch artist? Anyone who can draw pictures?”
Hesketh says, “Jones from Third Platoon is pretty handy with a pad and pencil.”
“Excellent,” Dad says. He points to the joints and bottom pads of the Creeper’s legs. “These legs…are different. They’ve been strengthened, improved, so that this type of Creeper can leap now. We need to get that information recorded and out as soon as we can. A lot of our installations are defended by dry moats. They’re now vulnerable.”
Hesketh yells back to the line, and I step closer to the edge of the rectangular pit where the first Creepers had come from. Dad and Wallace step next to me. It’s well made, with room for two Creepers, one behind the other. Good ambush maneuver, th
e first one coming out shooting, and to take any incoming fire, while the second one leaps up and over, avoiding the initial response.
Wallace’s voice is quiet. “You ever hear of this type of ambush?”
Dad removes his glasses, does his best to clear them with part of his sodden jacket. “No. And that’s something else to be passed on.”
“I don’t like any of this,” Wallace says.
“Me either,” Dad says. “Randy?”
I toe one of the joints of the Creeper’s legs, note a difference in its shape and external support from what I’ve seen before. Now there’s a familiar stench in the area, as the two dead Creepers inside their armored arthropods start decaying. A real challenge in this war is trying to capture them and interrogate them, to find why in hell they’re here and what they’re trying to achieve.
I hold up my M-10. “We’ve designed new weapons, developed new strategies to deal with these bastards since they invaded. Makes sense for them to do the same.”
Wallace says, “Agreed.” She walks up to the main arthropod, holding a hand to her nose from the stench of dying Creeper. She’s looking up at the abdomen, where there are overlapping plates, allowing the center arthropod to move, and where there’s also a permeable membrane that lets Creepers breathe our atmosphere.
Wallace backs away, her face flushed, looking sour, like she had bitten into a rotten apple. “Thank God everything looks the same up there. If they’ve changed their membranes or hardened their breathing apparatus, then we’re dead.”
True enough. Except for nuclear weapons, the only way to successfully kill the Creepers are with the binary cartridges used in the M-10s and other grenade launching systems. Oh, in the early days of the war, one other way to kill the Creepers was to use a sniper’s rifle with a heavy cartridge—like NATO 7.62 with a depleted uranium round—that when aimed very, very carefully, could slip through the armor plating and kill the Creeper inside.
And a few days ago, I learned another way, of holding onto a Creeper while it tries to kill you, by using a Ka-Bar knife to stab at it through the cracks, though I don’t recommend it.
Red Vengeance Page 11