The Earth Died Screaming

by Chuck Rogers

I shrugged. "At least a thousand and change. The rest I'll hunt down later."

  "And how many innocents?"

  Oh, for fuck's sake.

  "You want a shining knight? I'm already putting you in touch with Marshal Miles, Jeannie and the shields. But they're not going to save your ass. The SOG's name is legion. They have homemade rockets and heavy weapons. Colin and the cowboys might hold the canyons for a week before they're overwhelmed. You, Mar-J and the Malibu militia won't be enough to hold the barricades for a day. What the SOG is not banking on is that for what they did to Lalli? I'm going to do the unthinkable. She took one for the team and I am going to go get some payback. Saving you, Eve and everyone else's asses in your Malibu Barbie dream world is just a possible, pleasing side effect." I gave Ted the look. "You want to try and talk me out of it? Go ahead. Give it a shot. I'm listening. But keep it in mind, if you do? I bolt with Lalli and Face and leave you and Malibu to your fucking fates."

  Ted was a good guy. I liked him, but he was ruining my last beer.

  Ted sighed. "Very well."

  "Very well, what, Ted?"

  Ted shot me the movie star smile again. "What can I do to help?"

  You're a good man, Ted Cutshall.

  "You can wait twenty-four hours before giving Alice the letter. Meanwhile you can help me finish this beer.

  * * *

  I STEPPED INTO THE METEOR CRATER.

  The red dosimeter bars went through the roof.

  The crater was still hot. The Men-In-Black space suit was badass. It was about as comfortable as chem-suit could be, and currently Frame had no hard-on or tingling skin. I took the shovel and dug up the Men-In-Black tricorder and the com units. Three feet of water or dirt is the best radiation stop in the world, but I had no idea whether the equipment still worked or the radiation had finally irradiated the dirt and fried them. I wasn't about to turn them on, but they all had USB plugs and I'd put a four-hub USB charger in the Raptor's cigarette lighter. I juiced them up.

  That was Plan A.

  While they were charging I worked on Plan B.

  I took the pick and sledgehammer and went to work like I was back on the chain gang. I broke boulders into rocks. I broke rocks into rubble. I broke rubble into pebbles and I pounded pebbles into sand. I shouldn't have drank that beer. After about an hour I had to stagger out of the radiation zone and throw up.

  I was in bad shape.

  I had planned on this taking an afternoon.

  It took me all day and most of the next morning. The first air supply failed.

  But I loaded my buckets.

  All of ten of them.

  Plan A?

  I was the evil little shit on the playground that nobody liked and was always causing trouble.

  Plan B?

  Genuine war crime.

  I took the rest of the day off and slept in the truck out of range of the crater and my buckets. At sunset I put the suit back on and loaded up the truck. I checked the dosimeter. It said the truck bed was red hot and I was well pleased.

  Ged?

  Like the old song says?

  "You don't tug on Superman's cape

  You don't spit into the wind

  You don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger

  And you don't fuck around with Frame."

  I was a mobile contamination zone and I didn't want to run into friend or foe. I drove out of Malibu and into the park, lights out, using the night-vision goggles. So far I was okay and I was pretty sure my dick would tell me when I wasn't, but I had a nagging worry that the cosmic hoodoo might start effecting my gear and the truck's electrical. The sky was overcast. That turned the usual sky show into the creepy pulsing clouds. It was about as dark a night as you could get these days. Things were swinging in my favor. I swung wide around the ranger station and headed up into the hills. This isn't as easy as it sounds. The human eye has about 190-degree field of view. With most commercial goggles you are reduced to around 40. Distance estimation and depth perception are severely degraded. Just driving at speed at night on roads with NVG's is a military training course. Screaming ' Whoooo-hoooo! Hold my beer!' and plunging through the woods after sunset is not recommended.

  Low gear makes less noise anyway and like I said I was in no hurry and didn't want to meet anyone. I drove slow and stately for several hours. I started to itch under the suit but there was nothing erotic about it. I saw the SOG chopper in the distance using its spotlight, but they were hunting for Colin and his cowboys, not me. I stashed the truck in a culvert at the foot of the hill. I took my Plan A table of equipment and after walking thirty meters away the dosimeter bars turned mostly green, but continued to flicker at the bottom of the register.

  Taking off the chem-suit was close to an orgasmic experience. I took the suppressed AR with the one grenade in the launcher, the suppressed Ruger and the PPK, because every time I didn't take the PPK something bad happened to me.

  I packed the Men-In-Black communication gear.

  I took a handful of Ranger Bars and a canteen. Yeah, they were slightly radioactive, or what we're going to call the cosmic might, and I was beginning to wonder how much in the way of repeated exposures a single Frame could take before he started getting a little shrimpy.

  Who cares?

  This was a suicide mission.

  Again.

  I wore jeans and my tin cloth jacket but the cut I wore over it was one of the a leather ones I'd taken back at the original Malibou Lake Clubhouse Massacre. On my dome I had one of Joran Gufto's hunting hats with mosquito mesh. For about three heartbeats I might pass for 'Not-that-Frame-guy.'

  And darkness was my friend.

  I'd already picked my route and I hiked over the hill without incident. I stayed in the trees and went right back to where the fuckers had slaughtered my horses. It was an excellent overlook. The clouds parted. The sun rose.

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  The SOG was bringing everything and I mean everything. Once again the Malibou Lake Club property was ground zero. Military containerized housing units filled the parking lot. Just about every flat piece of ground around the lake had a tent on it. Every street around the lake was a parking lot of vehicles. Every house on the lake was a barracks. Every lawn had people in sleeping bags on it.

  It looked like the most hostile, California homeless encampment imaginable.

  I grinned from ear to ear.

  It was a glorious concentration.

  Or as we used to say in Recon?

  A target rich environment.

  The battle for Malibou Lake continued.

  I was already up two rounds to nothing.

  I ate two Ranger Bars, took two Xanax, drank some water and took a nap.

  * * *

  I SNUCK INTO CAMP.

  The SOG was as per usual fixated on the roads.

  Walking out of the woods was easy. Bonfires lit the sprawling encampment. That threw tremendous light and shadow disparities.

  That's where your friend Frame does his best work.

  Important spaces had generators and work lights. Maybe even Ged and Marrs were in them.

  I didn't care.

  If you have a sound plan, stick to it.

  I went for the Fuck Tent and watched in the shadows.

  I lit a stale American Spirit cigarette and leaned against a tree. I grunted at members who walked past me. Ged was the shit. Marrs was military and probably more dangerous than me.

  But they were riding herd on an army of very excitable amateurs.

  I hid in plain sight and waited.

  Jaiden came out of the Fuck Tent with Miles. Jaiden was out of the dress and wearing jeans and a leather jacket and looked like a young David Bowie. He was also standing a lot straighter. They gave each other a big hug and parted. That told me Miles wasn't a member yet. If he was he would have claimed Jaiden and they'd be living together. Jeannie would be happy to know Miles hadn't eaten human flesh yet. Deciding whom to chase was a conundrum but Jaiden was coming straigh
t towards me.

  I lurked in the darkness as Jaiden approached.

  "Jaiden."

  Jaiden barely registered it. He and Miles had been working on their secret agent shit. Jaiden kept walking and suddenly u-turned into the darkness. He walked right up to me and flung his arms around me in a big hug.

  "Frame!"

  I hugged the young man back. "Good to see you."

  "They're going to crucify you. It's an all points bulletin. Take Frame alive if you can for punishment. Chuck and Dez have first dibs."

  "Chuck's alive?"

  "You burned off his hair. He is so pissed. You're going to get fucked and cut. Then they're going to nail you to the tree of woe and peel you. Then they end your suffering with firewood and gasoline."

  Sounded about right.

  "So, Miles isn't a member?"

  "No, he still has to prove himself. But you're like the anti-Christ, and he's the guy who beat your ass. He's walking huge with the members. Word is he's going to be Marrs's wingman on the drive into Malibu."

  "What else?"

  "Frame? You're Judas." Jaiden started crying. "Malibu is going to be punished for what you did."

  "Where's Miles?"

  "Ged gave him a RV."

  "Can you go there?"

  "I'm not supposed to. But everybody knows about us. If I say Miles told me to sneak out I don't think anyone will stop me."

  "Good."

  "What's going to happen?"

  "You need to get to Miles now. Tell him I'm here, and it's fifty-fifty whether the whole place lights up." I took out a Men-In-Black com unit and a note written in my Wind-Talker code that translated said message received. "Tell him to turn this on and wait for my signal. Tell him to Morse code this message back to me and then you two run like hell. Doesn't matter where, just get in the trees and then out of the valley."

  "Okay."

  Jaiden took the com unit.

  "One other thing."

  "Yeah?"

  "If you make it to Malibu? I left you the Uzi and some other stuff in my will. I also said you can stay in my house. Tell Ted, Alice and Mar-J you're a friend of mine."

  Jaiden's jaw dropped.

  "Mar-J?"

  "Yeah."

  "Mar-J 2.0 the baseball player?"

  That put a smile on my face.

  "The very same."

  "Dude, he's my hero."

  That was going to put a smile on Mar-J's.

  I shrugged. "Yeah, me too, kinda."

  "They talk about the Malibu raid. About what they did to your woman." Jaiden started crying again. "They brag about it."

  Of course they did.

  "Jaiden, go. If Plan A doesn't work you don't want to be around for Plan B. Get to Miles, now."

  Jaiden lunged like Face and kissed me on the cheek. "Gone."

  He ran into the dark.

  I faded into the shadows and waited an hour.

  The entire SOG swirled around me.

  I took out the Man-In-Black asshole's finger. It had defrosted but in the dark it was difficult to see what condition it was in. I spat on it and wiped it down. The tricorder powered up just fine. The security screen with fingerprint ID popped up.

  I pressed it with the finger.

  The screen opened up and I was in.

  The screen was blank save for a sidebar of mostly geometric symbols that didn't mean anything to me. One appeared to be an antennae. I tapped it. A screen opened up with a map of Malibou Lake. A green dot appeared. The green dot blinked and data scrolling beneath it appeared to say 273m.

  That had to be Miles.

  I clicked on my com and a second green dot appeared right on top of me.

  It clicked my personal Wind-Talker code on the com-link. Translated it read:

  I AM THE BASTARD OF THE APOCALYPSE FUCK EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU

  Miles came right back with the coded reply.

  MESSAGE RECEIVED

  Let the fuckers triangulate on that.

  I left the channel open and dropped the com in a bush.

  I dropped the tricorder and the finger in a trash barrel without a fire burning in it and walked right out of camp and hiked right back to my lookout in the hills. I added some water to a strawberry-banana MRE dairy shake and commenced to waiting. I looked at pictures of Line I had transferred to my phone.

  It occurred to me that I had never taken a picture of Lalli.

  My hand went to the necklace and closed around Santa Muerte.

  My eyes started to sting.

  I'd never told Lalli that I loved her.

  I think she knew.

  But I should have said something.

  Giving Frame idle time to think.

  Always a bad idea.

  I took two Xanax and whiled away a few hours in some very dark places anyway.

  I looked down at the camp.

  What the hell was I waiting around for? Did I really expect the Men-In-Black to deploy a squadron of stealth fighters and carpet bomb the place immediately? They might take days planning their strike, or maybe send in assassination or recovery teams. I guess I was hoping for one last fireworks show.

  Plan B had always been Plan A.

  It would be dawn soon.

  Time for a war crime.

  I heard the "Pop-pop!" and looked up.

  I'd heard the sound before when I'd called in air strikes. I heard the second, third and fourth "Pop-pop!" and this time caught the separation flashes. The clouds had cleared away and I saw dozens and then hundreds of little objects floating down on parachutes out of the sky.

  I grinned from ear to ear.

  I snapped up my NVG's.

  The objects were metal tubes. They all started cutting their chutes, snapping open and rising and spinning like airborne ground bloom flower fireworks as their little rocket motors fired. Each of the violently spinning tubes ejected four, now spin-stabilized discs. These were just white dots in my NVG but each "smart skeet" spun and looked for a target. When it found one it fired a small, armor-piercing charge straight down. Those I saw as white streaks. The entire SOG vehicle park lit up as it was lanced from above by hundreds of angry, guided, flying hockey pucks. The secondary explosions started immediately and then some beautiful big booms. I swear you almost had to feel sorry for the SOG.

  They were having a really hard time holding onto their fuel tankers.

  They'd been smart and used smaller ones this time and kept them spread out.

  They all went off like bombs.

  I took off my NVG's as the second wave of little parachutes came down and spread out to cover just about everything north of the lake. This I wanted to see in Technicolor. The first bomblet hit the ground and blossomed into a small yellow explosion and then another and another then it was dozens and then hundreds.

  You heard me mention carpet-bombing.

  In a space of a couple of heartbeats everything from the dam to the street Dez and I's house was on disappeared in carpet of little interlocking explosions. This was a Combined Effect Munition. It had a little armor piercing charge in case it hit something hard. It had a little high-explosive charge to blow things up, and between them this lit up and spewed out a ring of zirconium powder that burned at seventeen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. They blew a hole, blew up and set everything on fire.

  For about one second these interlocking explosions lit up half the valley floor.

  It was glorious.

  If you blinked you missed it.

  They all winked out like the magic they were.

  In their wake hundreds of tents burned like torches. The majority of the houses on the north side of the lake caught fire. I was a little disappointed that the SOG's homemade rockets hadn't gone sky high but I guess they hadn't brought those up to the front just yet.

  Gonna have to go take care of that myself.

  But otherwise?

  Fan-fucking-tastic.

  As the echoes of the explosions died the moaning and the screaming became audible. Several th
ousand people getting caught out in the open by cluster bombs is not pretty. I couldn't guess what the ratio between survivors, the burned or mutilated and the dead might be, but it wasn't good.

  I took up my binoculars and scanned about what was left of camp.

  Not good.

  There were survivors. A few tried to help the wounded but most just staggered around in shock.

  The sun just started to illuminate the mountain ridges to the east.

  Then I heard it.

  "WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP . . ."

  Overkill?

  Probably.

  Couldn't have happened to nicer bunch of guys and gals.

  Cue Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries."

  Yo, Ged. You think you're the post apocalypse?

  I am Benjamin Allen Frame.

  I am Apocalypse Now.

  Six Blackhawk helicopters, painted black and bearing no markings descended upon Agoura out of the sunrise. They had their stub-wings affixed and every bird carried a pair of gun pods and pair of rocket pods each. They came in low, hot and loud. The rockets rippled out of the pods and everything in Agoura that hadn't been blown up got blown up. A lot of stuff that had been blown up already got bounced a second time.

  The birds broke formation and began orbiting above the carnage. Their mini-guns ripped into life at a hundred rounds a second. Tracers streamed down like lasers as they shot the shit out of anything that moved.

  One Blackhawk ceased its predations and swung down to a low hover above the trees near the smoking ruins of the pool house. An armed, six-man team fast-roped down. Black raid suits, armor, tactical goggles over black balaclavas. The whole bit.

  My jaw dropped.

  The Men-In Black set up a perimeter around the trash barrel I'd tossed the tricorder in.

  The barrel was untouched.

  Magic.

  I knew fear.

  The Man-In-Black who appeared to be in charge rummaged through the SOG's trash.

  He found the tricorder.

  He found the finger.

  He raised his binoculars and slowly scanned the southern hills I was hiding in.

  I hugged dirt in mortal terror.

  When I dared to look up again he had one hand to his ear and spoke into his com. The bird landed on an open spot. He wrapped the finger in a black bandanna and tucked it into his tactical vest.