“Now that’s a funny image,” he laughed. “You and I, strolling through the zoo. After all we’ve seen I think a couple of giraffes would be kind of anti-climactic.”
“This is a different world,” Nina whispered. “A world where I’m not a soldier, and you’re not a leader. It’s a dream world. We’re we could just be together. No responsibilities.”
He put his hand on her cheek.
“That’s a lovely world. A wonderful dream.”
She wrung her hands.
“And after tomorrow, you get to dream it. I won’t remember enough to want to dream.”
“Memories make us who we are. Take them away, and you change the person…”
Nina’s eyes snapped open. A feeling of warmth mixed in her heart with frustration; frustration that something important was stripped from her.
Her words—spoken seemingly by another woman—replayed, “This is a different world. A world where I’m not a soldier, and you’re not a leader. It’s a dream world. We’re we could just be together.”
Nina checked herself and considered. Could it be true? As far back as she could remember she had only wished to be a fighter. It encompassed all she was. Her reflexes, her eye for battle, her instincts—all smaller parts of the greater sum of a soldier. And she had never considered any other possibility. Sure, she had faked her way through school and kept her true self hidden, but never had she denied the fabric of her person.
Now she wondered—is there more?
Nina shook her head.
Now is not the time to think of these things.
For a soldier, confusion could prove deadly and she found more confusion in her heart than ever before.
She pushed hard. She pushed hard to kick any doubts—no, not doubts. Hope. Hope for being more. For having more in her life the way Denise had given her more. Having a daughter had not made her any less of a soldier. In fact, she accomplished more in the years with Denise than in all the time before. Denise gave her a reason to fight other than instinct. A real purpose.
“Hey, Captain,” Carl Bly’s voice pulled Nina from her thoughts. She appreciated the interruption.
“Yes, Carl,” she answered sarcastically, “You made a hell of a shot with that Javelin the other day. Now shut up about it.”
Oliver Maddock found that very funny.
Nina knew Carl had not been bragging again, but it felt like the right moment for a joke. She had one or two such moments a month.
She stood, walked to the dying fire, and sat next to them.
“Shit, Cap, I was just wondering where we’re headed.”
They knew she had received a list of possible targets during a radio transmission earlier. Their choice of missions remained entirely at her discretion with the occasional intel reports from command serving only as suggestions.
“We’re heading further north. Seems Voggoth has got an implant camp out at Fort Larned. I want to hit them.”
“Whew,” Carl reacted. “Implants? Won’t that have some heavy stuff guarding it?”
“No,” Nina shook her head. “Nothing to it. They grab a bunch of unarmed folks and march them up there to get a slug slipped in. Probably light infantry. Easy target if we do it right and along the way, well, I’m just saying we can save a lot of people who would otherwise be monks.”
“Love it,” Caesar grinned.
They grew silent as the soldiers contemplated the next mission.
A thought popped in to Nina’s mind. A question, actually. She could not be sure from where it came, but it slipped out of her lips and around the fire before she could stop.
“What do you guys miss from before all this?”
They stared, confused at the question.
Vince asked, “What, well, what do you mean?”
“You know,” Nina felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment but she suspected the dim light hid her blushing, “what do you miss from before the invasion and stuff. You know—all this.”
The other Dark Wolves knew the expression ‘all this’, but never once had their Captain shown any interest in life before Armageddon.
The way the men gaped at her—well it made Nina wish for a Stumphide to come charging from the forest and cause a firefight to break out.
“That was a long time ago,” Bly said. “Not sure I can even remember what that was like.”
“The mountains back home,” Oliver Maddock answered in a different tone; softer. In the orange flicker of the fire, Nina saw his eyes glaze over. “We rock-climbed Snowdown—that’s the biggest bloody mountain in all of Wales—a couple o’ times before I joined up.”
“Who was ‘we’?” Nina asked.
Maddock shrugged. “Just a girl—well, she was a little younger than me but we grew up together outside of Cardiff. Gentle creature; foxy one she was; far too good for the likes of me.”
Bly joked, “Now how come you never went talking about no girl before. Afraid I’d swim over there and steal her away?”
Maddock smiled through a fog of lost memories as he answered, “Never anythin’ serious, you hear? I ‘spose I always hoped it would be. She had this way ‘bout her. She could look at you and it was like she was lookin’ right through ya’. You know what I’m sayin’? Last time I saw Cai we spent the day down along Three Cliffs Bay before I shipped ‘cross the pound to hang out with you trogs.”
“Best move you ever made, limy,” Carl Bly slapped Oliver on the back.
“Yeah, well, the shit hit the fan and that’s ‘bout the end of that story, mun.”
“What about you, Captain?” Vince asked and he studied Nina close, as if hoping to peel away another layer of his mysterious leader. “What do you miss?”
Nina shook her head. For a split second the answer ‘pineapple’ came to her mind but she could not fathom why.
“I don’t know. I honestly—I honestly don’t know.”
“Captain was born for this shit,” Bly grinned. “Hell, yeah, if it weren’t for all this, she’d be bored to hell.”
A few chuckles broke out. Nina flashed a timid smile.
Fort Larned sat on flat ground five miles west of Larned, Kansas and just south of Route 156. An access road cut from 156 through a tree line then across fifty yards of grassland to the fort’s buildings which were arranged in a square shape around a large courtyard. Light woodlands brushed against the eastern and western perimeter while the south offered wide open plains and a clear field of vision for the defenders.
Nina, Vince Caesar, and the three elkhounds hid in cover to the west; Bly and Maddock to the east.
Nina spied one Spider Sentry walking on its spindly legs across the courtyard and one of the muscle-bound gray-skinned Ogres. Unlike the one guarding the convoy, this Ogre carried a giant iron mace with a spiked cube at the end.
Most of the facility’s garrison consisted of monks dressed in various shades of cloth stitched to resemble robes. Nina expected they wore lethal pellet-guns on their forearms but she saw each wielding The Order’s weapon of choice: swords, although their blades lacked any sense of style or even a true hilt; merely thin, sharp poles.
In any case, she stopped counting monks at 20 because a more important count grabbed her attention: people.
They came in a variety of shapes and sizes. Through her binoculars she saw several elderly men wearing clothes that gave them away as farmers, a teenage boy in ripped jeans, a soldier in green BDUs with his arm in a sling, a young couple with a daughter no more than eight clinging to her parents. The monks herded the group out from the barracks toward a bent flag pole at the center of the courtyard.
Nina watched one of the assimilated monks shove a middle-aged woman. She spotted a couple of young black boys try and slip around a corner only to be turned back by the Ogre.
She counted 20 human beings congregating in the middle of the place. Nina heard sobs, pleas for mercy, and moans of agony.
Her binoculars fixed on one of the two larger buildings on the north side; the Company Officer
s Quarters. The stately white rails along the front porch were now covered in wiry vines that grew like a cancer upon the vintage 1800s structure. The openings where doors and windows had once been now appeared more like cave entrances laced in a thick buildup of slimy green mold.
Implant incubator, she thought. And she knew the people in the courtyard would be sent inside that chamber of horrors in small groups.
The Order did not need such assembly lines; implants could worm their way into the hide of victims easily enough, but these assembly lines both improved the odds of successful implantation and allowed for faster processing of prisoners.
However, Nina found it odd that she saw only 20 people preparing for implantation. That seemed a small catch for an implant center. It struck her that Voggoth appeared most focused on destruction as part of his push east, not assimilation. This contradicted their contact with The Order during those first years. In those days The Order would kill, yes, but they preferred to capture and control, as if implanting and mutating humanity better served Voggoth.
“Do not fear, my children!”
The voice came from a woman wearing a dark robe and gliding among the hostages. “Be comforted, friends, for you will soon be one with the living God.”
Cries of ‘no’ and ‘please’ and ‘I’ll do whatever you want. just let me go!’ rang out.
Nina used binoculars to eye the speaker: a middle aged woman with a drawn face and thin long fingers. She spoke in a booming voice that made Nina think of radio preachers from the pre-war days dictating the gospel across late night air waves.
“Do not fear! Soon you will know the touch of Voggoth!”
Nina heard more voices, just below that of the missionary woman. She could not quite understand those voices—she concentrated and closed her eyes—a memory from long ago came to the front of her mind; something from a long time ago…
“I can’t hold it steady! We’re leaking hydraulic fluid!”
“Goddamn it, I knew you’d get me killed you dumb bitch!”
“Merede! Scott! Shut your ass or I swear on Mary’s name I’ll choke the hell out of you with my bare hands!”
“Scott, Sal, quiet! Nina, we gotta find somewhere to set her down. I’m thinkin’ just about anythin’ flat will do. Wait—look, to the right here—there’s a pad on that hospital roof.”
“Shep, I don’t think we can—“
“Just try, Nina. I reckon’ that and prayin’ is about all we have left.”
Helicopter blades—a gunning engine—shouts and grunts…
“You missed! Goddamn—“
“I can’t control it—power is almost—almost gone.”
“Nina! The parking garage. Aim for it!”
A horrid metallic screech. Glass splintering. A cry of pain. A scraping sound…
She tried to re-focus on the woman preaching the virtues of Voggoth to a terrified crowd of human prisoners. Instead, she felt pressure on her throat—on her wrists—and heard voices in the dark…
“She is quite strong. She will do nicely.”
“But your Excellency, she is very dangerous. She destroyed many of Voggoth’s children before we could capture her. The male would be easier to—“
“No. He is too weak and shallow-minded. This operation requires much more complex thinking capability in order for the new implant to remain hidden. As for her strength, this is an asset. They will accept her without question.”
“You desire the new procedure? The prototype? Is it not too soon?”
“Yes, the new prototype. It has passed the test on parallel battlefields with other races; it will work here, too. Humans are, in the important ways, identical to the other inferior species. Now do as I command. Then make preparations to return her to the city, somewhere near the crash site.”
“And the male—I shall prepare him for the standard drone implant.”
“No! If they count him among our number in the future, then they will suspect her. As much as it pains me to deny Voggoth another child, terminate him.”
“It will take time, Excellency, to prepare phase two of the process. The memory reconstruction alone will take several hours and—wait, your Excellency, she is conscious.”
“It matters not. She will not remember. Or rather, she will remember only that which we give to her. Proceed. Hello, my child, do not fear for you will serve Voggoth in a most special way…”
Nina’s attention returned to the historic fort, the humans inside, and most especially the missionary who preached the blasphemous word of Voggoth.
She spoke to the trio of K9s, “Odin, Mallow, Campion—decoy!” And she pointed to the north.
As Grenadiers are apt to do, they followed her orders as if they could do more than listen; as if they could read her mind. The black and gray dogs bound away from the cover of the tree line and into daylight. They curved north as they ran, barking when they reached the perimeter of the fort.
The Spider Sentry opened fire; six of the monks—with their pseudo-swords drawn—pursued as the dogs bolted north behind the historical buildings on the western perimeter, just skirting the forest as they ran.
A few hundred yards to the east, Bly and Maddock left their hiding place in the woods. Bly toted an M249 machine gun and dropped on his belly at the northeast corner of the Fort, just to the east of the implant building and opposite the side where the dogs had drawn attention.
At the same time, Maddock moved to the southeast corner with his PSG1 sniper rifle.
The dogs continued to run and the Spider Sentry and monks gave chase in an almost comical fashion. Instead of cutting them off they followed the K9s movements precisely, as if stuck on a path.
Nina Forest and Vince Caesar left cover and advanced from the west coming up behind the pursuing Spider Sentries and monks. Both fired grenades from the M203 launchers under their M4 barrels.
Nina’s grenade landed amidst the monks. A thud of an explosion launched black smoke, discarded swords, and chunks of mutated human bodies against the outer walls of the historic buildings.
Caesar’s grenade hit the spider sentry with brilliant accuracy, severing its rear-most legs and causing the ‘head’ to fall and roll while firing pellets at an insane pace directly into the sky.
The three remaining monks among the pursuit group turned to face the new threat. But so did the K9s, who reversed course and set upon the robed villains from behind. Despite their forearm-mounted firearms, the monks were torn to pieces in a few moments.
As Nina and Vince rounded the corner of one of the stone buildings, the monks in the courtyard opened fire forcing the commandos behind the wall for cover. The corralled humans fled to the south, some entering the barracks others making for the open field.
“Blasphemers! Feel the wrath of the living god!”
Voggoth’s priestess produced two fleshy balls slightly larger than softballs. She threw the objects and they rolled across the dusty courtyard. As they did, the balls expanded in mass, not unlike a cartoon snowball growing larger as it cascades down a slope.
The objects grew to the size of very large beach balls and stopped rolling. Thin appendages pushed through the surface of the balls into the air, bent at some sort of joint, and reached to the ground lifting the round center into the air. Two more Spider Sentries joined the fight.
Instantly, the first one disintegrated as Carl Bly raked the courtyard with light machine gun fire from the northeast. Puss oozed from the ‘face’ of the Sentry and it dropped into a lifeless mess.
The remaining monks—more than a dozen—alternated their attention from corner to corner of the fort. They fired at every human they could see, soldier or civilian; striking down several of the fleeing captives in the process. Meanwhile, the Ogre roared and charged at Carl Bly’s position.
Maddock opened fire with his sniper rifle. In an instant he emptied an entire clip of five bullets, killing three monks in the process.
Nina and Vince poked around the corner of the building and joi
ned the firefight with bullets and anti-personnel grenades. More of the monks died.
The remaining Spider Sentry advanced on Nina’s position. The nose cone on its ‘face’ darted out like a skewer on a hose and slammed into the stone wall of a building, cutting loose a large chunk of rock.
“We need to fall back,” Vince said.
Nina answered with action, not words.
She jumped out from around the building, rolled to a kneel, and launched her M203 directly at the Spider Sentry. The grenade flew wide, arced into the courtyard, and exploded harmlessly a few yards in front of the implant factory.
The monster launched its skewer and fired pellets at the same time. The sharp cone pierced the ground next her feet. The tiny bullets peppered the ground all around her.
Vince followed Nina’s lead. His grenade—as it had with the first Spider—hit true. The ball at the center of the legs broke apart into goo.
On the northeast side, the gray-skinned Ogre charged at Carl Bly’s machine gun. The soldier gave his attention to this threat, hitting the muscle-bound fiend square on in the chest with a series of 5.56 rounds in rapid succession. While the bullets bounced off the creature’s chest, the impacts caused pain and slowed its approach.
Click.
The M249 ran dry. The barrel sizzled with heat.
The wounded Ogre raised its heavy black mace above its head…
Bly pulled his Desert Eagle side arm and fired four shots into the Ogre’s knees. The flesh there exploded. The creature—dazed, exhausted and surprised—dropped its mace and fell to one knee directly in front of the machine gun. It sort of hovered there, not quite ready to die but lacking focus.
Bly calmly pulled a new ammunition box from his kit and slipped it into place on the 249. The whole time the half-dead Ogre swayed side to side with its eyes glazed. Bly smiled at the disabled monster and winked just as he slipped the ammo box into place.
Then he unleashed a firestorm of bullets at nearly point-blank range into the Ogre’s face. It tore the beast apart. Bly then returned his attention to the battle on the courtyard where the last remaining monk fell to Vince Caesar’s assault rifle.
Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion Page 25