Battle- Earth

by Mark Harrison

  Manuel laughed. “You’ve gotta way with the ladies, Rick,” he said.

  Dirk buckled over laughing. The two of them got into the moonshine early this morning.

  Rick didn’t find it funny. He wasn’t in the mood to laugh at jokes at his expense and his face still hurt form the slap. “You assholes wouldn’t have survived a month without my guidance. Remember Salt Lake City?”

  Tuck, Dirk and Manuel smiled, nodded, and stopped goading Rick. Of course they remembered Salt Lake City? How could they forget? Rick was the hero who saved the day. Without him, they would have all been dead. Salt Lake City was their second encounter with a hostile group of humans. Their first, of course, had been when they rescued Dirk. But Salt Lake was also their last encounter with the AOJs. It was a clusterfuck of a scenario. Thinking about it now made Dirk shudder. The camp was still just a caravan of vehicles then. They didn’t have many weapons and they were all tired. There was a mothership nestled over a suburb outside of Salt Lake City so Rick guided the caravan on some back roads. He thought it’d be safer to drive around the city, then go through it. Just as they thought they made it clear of the city and the motherships, Rick noticed a group of vehicles on top of a ridge overlooking the back road the caravan was travelling down. They didn’t look friendly. The hostile group stood outside their trucks, holding weapons, and wore masks. When they spotted Rick’s caravan, they all jumped into their vehicles and scrambled down the ridge. The cloud of dust they shut up in the dry, Salt Lake City heat was not ideal. When Rick saw the cloud of smoke, he knew the AOJs would be arriving shortly. They were far enough from a mothership that they wouldn’t attract too much attention, but they were still close enough that the odd AOJ straggler would spot them. Sure enough, within a few seconds of the dust cloud, three AOJs were in the area. While the caravan wasn’t a well-equipped force, they did have some weapons. Rick still had his AR-99 and Dirk had a store of weapons under his trailer. Dirk made sure that every survivor that joined the caravan knew how to fire a gun. Rick’s suspicions that the hostile group of humans were, in fact, hostile was proven true when they started to fire their weapons from their trucks. The caravan returned fire and the chase began. The caravan of survivors was followed by the hostile humans in trucks who were being followed by three AOJs. Every now and then, a plasma burst would explode. Rick knew it was only a matter of time before every one was dead. A mile from the county road, Rick spotted a pond. It was their only chance at getting out of the situation. It was time to play a game of chicken. It was worth the risk. He guided the caravan offroad. Between the concrete of the road and the pond was a flat rocky plain. It wasn’t going to be the smoothest ride, the caravan’s vehicles would have to take it. The caravan followed him off the road. Their vehicles bouncing and hopping off the small bumps and divots of the plain in front of the pond. The group of hostile humans followed suit. They must’ve thought the caravan was suicidal. But that didn’t stop them from the chase, which was what Rick was hoping for. As they approached the pond, Rick stuck his left hand out of the window of his car. He signalled with his hand to make a sharp left turn. Thankfully, the caravan noticed Rick’s signal. Each vehicle in the caravan made a quick sharp turn. The sudden turn kicked up a wall of dust. The hostile humans didn’t see the change of direction. The dust cloud had blinded their vision. A few of their vehicles drove straight into the pond. The rest slammed on their breaks. The three AOJs that had spotted the interaction between the caravan and trucks surrounded the hostile group. The alien ships made quick work of them. But not quick enough that they noticed the caravan driving away in the distance.

  Reflecting on that close call now, five years later, made Rick pause. He looked into the burning embers of the fire pit. He didn’t choose to be the leader of this outfit. He didn’t want the role. But he had protected this group of survivors for five years. He considered them all family. It didn’t matter what he was in the past . Sandra Connor would have to learn that. He needed to tell her the truth. He needed to tell her about what actually happened on the Olympus Mons mission. Maybe then she would bury the hatchet and learn to move on.

  He walked back to the shack Sandra and her children had called home for the last few days. He could hear Tuck, Dirk and Manuel laughing again. The bastards. “Sandra, we need to talk.”

  There was no response. He knocked. As he hit the steel plating of the door the whole shack shook.

  “Stop your knocking,” Sandra said from inside.

  “I wanna talk.”

  “Didn’t my slap teach you anything?”

  “I shouldn’t have to apologize for what happened in the past. You have every right to be angry. But I have some information about the Olympus Mons mission that you may find interesting.”

  As Sandra opened the shack’s door it fell to the ground. Both her and Rick looked at the remains of the door. “Some kind of camp you’ve built here,” she said.

  Rick smirked. He could see her two children in the back of the shack. Claire was sharpening an arrow and Bobby was reading a book entitled ‘Survival Skills For The Hunter.’ “Listen,” Rick said. “The Olympus Mons mission wasn’t what you think it was. My father didn’t go crazy up there. He didn’t kill your husband. Our loved ones died fighting these things.”

  Sandra looked at Rick and studied his face. Was he saying what she thought he was saying? “Of all the people I find alive on this fucking planet! I find the one asshole who thinks he can talk his way out of anything.” She motioned to slap him, but this time he grabbed her hand before she hit him.

  “I’m telling you the truth. Now, you can either leave this camp. Or you can tell us where you were going and we can help you get there. Learn to move on from the past. It’s a place of pain. It’s just regret. I know what it’s like to live there. I spent the years living there after Olympus Mons. I tried to forget, but it never worked.”

  He dropped Sandra’s hand. She let it fall to her waist.

  “So I’m supposed to believe the coward that hit my husband and got himself kicked off the Olympus Mons mission is some do-gooder hero now?”

  “No,” said Rick. “I’m no hero. I’m just some asshole who knows how to survive. Clearly, you do, too!”

  That stuck with Sandra. Rick had survived. Not only that, he’d managed to help a group of survivors live through the worst of the apocalypse. How the hell did he manage to keep this group together all these years? Since she’d arrived at the camp, she saw the way the camp members looked at him. They trusted him the way she’d never seen anybody trust anyone else. It reminded her of the commitment Quinton’s camp members showed him, but without the weirdness. How did this drunk asshole, who’d spent most of his life living off his father’s success, manage to hold this all together? “I don’t know what you’ve done to convine these people that you’re a hero, but I’m not buying it!” she said.

  “I don’t give a rats ass what you think I am.”

  “We’ll leave in the morning.”

  “Oh yeah,” Rick said. “And go where? We can help. Let us at least give you some supplies. I think it’s fair you tell us where Starpeak is. We know this territory well. We can tell you if you’re headed into a group of hostiles. But I suggest you reconsider. You and your children can hunt. We could use you all in our camp. If you haven’t noticed, hunting out here isn’t exactly easy. There’s hardly any wildlife left out in these woods.”

  She didn’t respond to Rick’s request to tell him where she was going. Her mind was racing with confused thoughts. Rick had punched Keith in the face. She remembered what Keith said about him all those years ago. He said that Rick Frost was some hot shot pilot who liked to drink and get into fights. When Rick was kicked off the Olympus Mons mission, Keith said it was the best thing that could’ve happened. And then Keith died. And he died because of Rick’s father. The crazed loon who’d destroyed the ship and killed the crew. And now here she was, almost ten years after it all happened. Keith just a memory in her head, a voice that pushes
her forward. And the man who he hated, the man who he said was reckless, may be her only means of survival.

  “What’s it going to be?” asked Rick. “Your disrupting the rhythm of the camp and we have work to do. You can either help us out. Or you can leave. But at least have the decency to tell us where you are going.”

  She had to tell him. Even if she told Bobby and Claire to keep it a secret from everyone. She had to tell Rick the truth. “We’re trying to find a secret base.”

  “Secret base?”

  “Yes,” Sandra said. “It’s a bunker. It’s located in StarPeak Mountain. That’s where we are going.”

  Hearing Sandra say she was looking for the bunker in the Rockies hit him like the slap she gave him to the face. He walked backward from her shack and fell to the ground. Tuck, Dirk and Manuel watched him as he tumbled. He regained composure. Did she say what he thought she said?

  “The SpaceForce bunker?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. She looked shocked. “How did you know it was SpaceForce?.”

  For a second, Rick couldn’t speak. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. “Listen, I know you’re not going to believe me, but I am looking for the same secret base. I’ve…” He stopped and then motioned to the camp members all around him, “We’ve spent the last five years trying to find it.”

  She looked at him, her eyes moved up and down his body. If it was any other scenario, he’d think she was checking him out.

  “You mean to tell me, that you’re looking for the bunker, too?”

  “Yes,” said Rick. “We’re all looking for ir.”

  “And you haven’t found it?”

  “It hasn’t been easy.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “It hasn’t,” Rick said. “We have no fucking clue as to where to look. We’re aimless. We know it’s somwhere in the Rockies, near Denver. That’s all we’ve got.”

  “You mean to tell me, you don’t know about the constellations?”

  “Constellations?”

  “Yes,” said Sandra. “The constellations. The bunker is said to be located between two constellations.”

  “Which constellations?”

  “Between Cepheus and Cygnus. There’s a small mountain. That’s Starpeak. Their base is said to lie somewhere within that mountain. You haven’t heard about the constellations?”

  Rick ran to his shack. He pulled out his star map. How far were they from this location? Sandra ran after him. Like him, she was confused. Was he telling the truth? She didn’t believe it. As she ran after him, she shouted, “Why are you looking for the bunker?”

  Rick opened his shack door, unravelled the star map he kept under his bed, and called back to Sandra, “Because then I can head back to South Dakota.”

  Sandra walked through his door. When she heard his response, she sighed. “So you want to find the bunker so you can drop these people off? You really are no hero.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” he said. He didn’t look up at her, he looked at the map. ”All I owe these people is hope. When I rescued them, that’s what I promised. If I didn’t give them hope, then I should have left them for dead. So that’s what I am trying to give them. If we can get to the bunker, then they should have at least some hope. Hell, if there is anything that can take these fucking aliens on, it’s in that bunker.”

  “You’re right about that,” she said.

  Rick looked up from the map and stared at Sandra. He was confused.

  “From what I’ve heard, they are close to harnessing the alien tech,” she said. “That’s why we came here. That’s why we’re in Colorado. SpaceForce is working on the counter-attack.”

  Before Rick could respond, the camp’s alarms began to wail. Hostiles were attacking.

  Chapter 25

  The camp had one entrance. If the hostiles wanted to get in, they’d have to go through it or they’d have to scale the walls. Most hostiles chose to attack the entrance.

  The camp’s defenses weren’t restricted to being just within its walls. Tuck equipped sensors on trees that surrounded the perimeter. If any hostiles were to attack, they’d pass one of these trees. When they did, the sensors would set the alarms off. That said, the alarms going off didn’t always mean intruders. Friendly newcomers, squirrels, bears, and other wildlife would sometimes set them off. It wasn’t perfect, but the camp didn’t have a lot of technology and they had to make do with what they had.

  The alarms hung alongside the inner side of the camp walls. When they’d go off, they emitted a low-pitched wailing sound, like a mix between the police siren and a firealarm. It wasn’t pleasant. But they’d do their job. When the sirens wailed, each survivor ran to their stations. They were to do this even if it was a false alarm. Rick made sure that everyone had a station and knew it. He didn’t like being so disciplined about everything, he was starting to remind himself of his father, but he knew being disciplined was the only way they were going to survive a serious attack. They had to be ready. Attacks were common. But they always comprised of a few hostiles. And it had been weeks since they’d fired their weapons.

  Aside from the sensors, Tuck and Dirk had assembled a bunch of machine gun turrets at the main entrance. When the alarm rang, Tuck ran to the machine gun turret control panel, which was a cluster of monitors, each of which displayed the barrel of the turret gun. Dirk ran to the explosion hut, so called because no one was allowed to light a match within twenty feet of it. He grabbed a handful of homemade dynamite and ran up one of the camp walls ladders. There was a small, two-foot wide platform that ran along the upper crust of the wall. Manuel ran to Patricia, kissed her, and then to the infantry tent. That’s where all the rifles were held. He grabbed one, and like Dirk, climbed up the camp’s walls. Once he was perched atop the wall, he took aim at the intruders.

  Rick joined Manuel atop the wall’s lip. That’s where most of the other camp members were stationed. He peaked over the ledge of the wall. This wasn’t a false alarm. The intruders were running up the small hill the camp rested on. They wore hockey masks and were carrying hand grenades and pistols. They weren’t an intimidating crew, but they had enough equipment to be taken seriously. They looked like the group of hostiles located twenty miles north of the camp. They lived in a small cave at the base of a waterfall. Tuck noticed them in the winter during a hunt. He convinced Rick they wouldn’t be a problem. Their group was too small and they didn’t seem well equipped. That wasn’t the case. They were well enough equipped that they could launch an assault on the camp. Rick gave Tuck a dirty look. The old man was getting soft in his old age. He was too trusting. This attack wasn’t going to be easy. It was a big one. Rick counted thirty attackers.

  Sandra and her kids were confused when the alarms started to go off. Everything happened so quick, they didn’t know what to do. Bobby and Claire ran out of their shack with their bows and arrows. Sandra ran from Rick’s shack to her children. When she saw the weapons in their hands, she ran to her bag and grabbed her crossbow. For years, they survived with these simple weapons.

  Rick looked down from the wall at them. He was confused. Why didn’t they grab a rifle? Crazy fools. When the Connor’s climbed the ladder to the wall, carrying their weapons, Rick asked, “You don’t think you can help with those things, do you?”

  Sandra didn’t say anything. He didn’t know how capable she and her children were. This was all they would need.

  Bullets from the hostiles clanged off the wall. A small group of attackers were hidden behind a large fallen tree. The others were scattered among the dense wood and small foot hills that surrounded the camp.

  The trees surrounding the camp were tall. It’s one of the reasons why Rick picked it as a spot. Nothing flying overhead would be able to see it. The only problem, was that the trees surrounding it gave plenty of cover. These hostiles must have been planning this attack for some time. They knew the area well. Rick shook his head. This was why they hadn’t been attacked in a while.

>   The camp members atop the wall rested their backs against cold metal of the walls upper siding. They were waiting for direction from their leader. Rick knew it was time to act. He shouted, “Anytime, Dirk!”

  Dirk had a stick of dynamite in his mouth and a match in his hands. He crafted the sticks of dynamite on his days off. At first he used materials he’d brought with him from his house in the Nevada desert, but he found more bomb making supplies a few weeks ago in an old abandoned mine. He now had enough chemicals to make hundreds and hundreds of sticks. At first, Rick was reluctant to let Dirk bring all the explosive substances from the mine back to camp. But Dirk insisted that he would play it safe. He did. Mostly. There was one small incident back in March, where he almost blew off one of his arms. But that was it. Dirk lit the dynamite stick in his mouth, then chucked the explosive stick over the wall, toward the fallen tree that some of the hostiles were hiding behind.

  As the dynamite stick hit the ground, the hostiles ran. Seconds later, the fallen tree exploded into a million pieces. Slivers of wood shot out in all directions, they acted like tiny pellets from a shotgun, spraying their deadly debris in all directions. Rick peaked over the upper siding of the wall. Three bodies were on the ground. One of the bodies had its legs blown off. The other two bodies were littered with sticks of wood from the blast. This was going to be one messy clean up.

  The hostiles that had managed to get away from the blast, ran to a tree and hid behind it. Rick nodded to Dirk who was already lighting his next piece of dynamite. Rick hoped that the second explosion would scare them off. A group this size had never attacked the camp before. Because of this, he decided they needed more fire power. “Fire it up!” he shouted down to Tuck.

  Tuck smiled.

  The machine gun turrets sprung into action. The two turrets were placed on either side of the entrance. Tuck couldn’t use them too liberally, as ammo was hard to find. The machine gun turrets wound up and fired their massive, armor piercing bullets at the trees the hostiles were hiding behind. Chips of wood flew off each trees trunk as the bullets shredded away at the bark and worked their way through the wood. Globs of blood from hiding attackers splashed out beyond their hiding spot.