He was armed with a Rossmore 236 shotgun for clean-up work, and an L23 Fareye for use on targets up to six hundred yards away. Although it was Hale’s hope to avoid enemy contact if at all possible.
Last, but not least, were ski poles plus a pair of snow-shoes that Hale would don once he left the plane. His thoughts were interrupted as the Party’s Girl’s pilot—a long, lean officer named Harley Purvis—appeared at his side. Purvis sported a New York Yankees baseball cap, a well-worn leather jacket, and a pair of fleece-lined boots. He had dark brown skin, even features, and had been given the call sign “Hollywood” in flight school.
“You are one crazy bastard,” Purvis said as he slapped Hale on the shoulder. “You know this could cost you your bars.” The pilot had to yell in order to be heard over the sound of the engines.
Hale knew that what Purvis said was true, but he didn’t care. He was tired of being dead.
Like all the soldiers in the Sentinel program, he was officially listed as “Killed in Action,” which meant his family believed him to be dead. It was a precaution intended to prevent information about the top secret SRPA program from leaking out.
But as the Chimera continued to push down into his home state of South Dakota, most people fled or were killed. As a result, Hale had no idea what had happened to his mother, father, and sister. Were they still alive?
The question had haunted Hale ever since his return from overseas—and repeated attempts to obtain information had been fruitless. None of them was listed as having entered one of the government-run Protection Camps. Was that because they weren’t willing to take what his father would regard as a handout? Or was it because they were dead? Like millions of other people around the world.
Hale was determined to find out.
“Yeah,” he responded, “if they catch me, I’ll have to call you ‘sir,’ and that would be ridiculous.”
“Actually, given the fact that I’m a first lieutenant, and you’re a butter bar, you should call me ‘sir’ anyway,” Purvis responded loftily. “And I plan to keep my bars… So if you get caught roaming around the countryside, be sure to lie about how you got here.”
“You can count on it,” Hale assured him. “And you can consider that IOU paid in full. Where did you learn to play poker anyway? The Girl Scouts?”
“At UCLA,” Purvis answered with mock indignation. “But having lost to a lowlife like you, it looks like I need a refresher course.” Then he turned serious. “Remember, thirty-six hours, that’s all I can give you! And one more thing…”
“Yeah?”
“Watch your six… It’d be a shame if a Hybrid blew your ass off and ate it for lunch.”
Hale just grinned, gave a wave, and left the plane through the rear hatch. After a one-foot jump his boots sank four inches into the soft snow—a sure sign that snowshoes would be needed.
Hale knew Purvis had a mission to complete, so he hurried to clear the LZ quickly so the Party Girl could take off. Once he had waded out to a point where he could be seen from the cockpit he waved again, and saw the pilot give him a thumbs-up in return. There was a dark-skinned beauty painted on the VTOL’s nose, and Hale noticed that one of her eyes was closed in a sardonic wink. Then the engines roared, snow swirled, and the ship went straight up.
Hale watched it go, but it wasn’t until the plane had disappeared into the lead gray sky, and the drone of its engines died away, that he felt the full weight of his decision. Maybe he was crazy, but what else could he do?
If his family was dead, well, the reality of it would be hard to take. But not knowing was even worse. Frank and Mary Farley weren’t his real parents. They had been killed during the influenza epidemic of 1924. But the Farleys had raised Hale as if he was their biological son, and now it was his duty to do what any son would, which was to help his mom and dad if such a thing was possible.
So Hale found a spot where the wind had blown away most of the snow, sat down, strapped the snowshoes to his boots, and got back on his feet with help from a ski pole. Then, having checked his compass, he set off.
The surface of the snow was frozen, so each time Hale brought one of the snowshoes forward and shifted his weight to it, there was a soft crunch as the shoe broke through the top crust. Hale had used snowshoes throughout his childhood, but it had been a while. The key was to maintain the correct distance between his feet, because if he placed them too far apart he would consume more energy than was necessary. And if he brought them too close he would bark his shins.
It took a while to find the old rhythms again, but once he had, Hale made much better time. Good thing, too, because the Rocking F Ranch was still fifteen miles away.
It would have been nice if Purvis had been able to put him down in the front yard of the family home, of course, but that would have forced the pilot to enter prohibited airspace. “Prohibited,” meaning airspace that had been ceded to the Chimera. It was off-limits to any aircraft not on an authorized mission.
So he had to do it the old-fashioned way. Still, Hale was confident that he could make the round-trip with time to spare, so long as the weather held and he didn’t encounter any of the enemy. The low cloud cover would keep most of the Chimeran aircraft on the ground, and the steady snowfall would obliterate his tracks as well.
That was the theory anyway.
But as Hale topped a rise and made his way down the opposite slope he discovered that he was unexpectedly tired, and welcomed the opportunity to rest next to a group of trees. After less than an hour of walking his thigh and calf muscles were already sore. He knew they would hurt even more the following morning. The weight of his food, weapons, and ammo was a factor as well.
The break offered him an opportunity to eat a hard Hershey bar and scan the whiteness that lay ahead. He knew he would be easier to spot out in the open, and if forced to defend himself, he’d have no place to hide. With that in mind he panned the binoculars across the rolling prairie, looking for even the tiniest hint of movement, a color that shouldn’t be there, or a feature that wasn’t consistent with its surroundings.
Between the misty haze that hung like a backdrop across the land, a veil of thinly falling snow, and the dim winter light, visibility was poor. But Hale spotted some movement off to the right and felt a sudden surge of adrenaline, only to discover that he was looking at three gaunt horses. Left on their own by the war, they stood huddled next to the building where they had once been fed.
Satisfied that the way was clear, Hale left the relative protection offered by the trees and slip-slid out across the unmarked snow. Lung-warmed air jetted out in front of him, the snowshoes made a consistent swish-thump sound, and the Rossmore thumped against his chest. The alternative was to carry the weapon across his back, along with the Fareye, but that would open him up to a sudden attack by Leapers. The dog-sized creatures could jump six feet in the air and had a lethal bite. It required quick reflexes and a powerful weapon to bring them down, so having a shotgun at the ready increased one’s chances of survival.
So the shotgun remained where it was as he crossed the open area, passed the barn on his right, and spotted some snow-blurred tracks that ran down through a gully and up the other side. Some of the impressions had been made by various types of livestock, but there were others as well, including impressions left by splay-footed Hybrids.
As Hale sidestepped his way up the slope, he was careful not to pop up over the top, knowing that just about anything might lie in wait beyond. But his fears were groundless, and when he brought the binoculars up, all he saw was open prairie.
No, not all. Some of the tracks wandered off to the right and left, but the rest led to a point where a dark smudge could be seen, about a hundred yards in front of him. There were no sounds other than the measured rasp of his own breathing, the soft rustle of his parka, and the insistent sigh of the wind.
Hale’s tracks overlaid all the rest as he made his way out toward the dark thing—and he was momentarily startled when a flock of crows too
k to the air.
A moment later he realized he was looking at a dead Titan. Judging from the sizable cavity where its abdominal organs should have been, the carcass had been lying there for days. The variety of tracks in the blood-tinged snow indicated that scavengers of every possible description had been feeding off the carcass for some time. But what was responsible for the monster’s death?
Certainly it hadn’t been a band of civilians, even if any remained in the area. Titans were twenty feet tall, carried powerful cannons, and were notoriously difficult to kill. Hale knew firsthand, because he’d been forced to tackle the beasts in England, and had no desire to do so again.
So what brought the Titan down, Hale wondered, as he circled the body. A strafing attack by a Sabre Jet? Had a VTOL happened by on its way back from a mission? Hale figured it had been something of that sort, although he would never know for sure.
The next three hours were spent slogging across the gently rolling prairie. Hale was forced to cut his way through a barbed wire fence on one occasion, and came across others that, judging from the tracks in the snow, had been torn down by a Chimeran Stalker. A patrol perhaps? If so it was one more thing he had to worry about.
There were other signs of the enemy presence as well, including piles of frost-glazed Hybrid dung, a dead steer that had been riddled with projectiles from a Chimeran Bullseye, and the remains of an encampment littered with partially gnawed human bones. All of which forced Hale to slow down lest he inadvertently walk into a Chimeran emplacement.
By that time he knew he was nearing the White River. It ran roughly east and west, a few miles south of the main highway that ran between Rapid City and Sioux Falls. The Rocking F Ranch was located in the strip of land south of the highway and north of the river.
In order to get there Hale would have to cross the river via one of the local bridges. The span he had in mind was a modest affair that had been put in place to serve ranchers who needed to move livestock back and forth across the waterway. Hale had spent the first two decades of his life in the area, so he knew exactly how to reach the bridge. But would it still be there? If so, was it being used by the Chimera? There was only one way to find out.
At that point Hale decided to remove the clumsy snowshoes, bundle them with the ski poles, and tie all of them to his pack. Then, boots sinking into the snow, he fought his way up the side of a low-lying hill to an outcropping of rock at the top. A spot where a much younger Hale had spent many an hour while his horse grazed below. It was a fairly simple matter to circle around, find cover, and examine the bridge through his binoculars.
The good news was that the structure was still in place, but the bad news was that four stinks were guarding it. Two of the Hybrids were stationed at the north end of the span, one carrying a Bullseye, and two of them paced back and forth at the south end, one of them wielding an Auger.
The Chimera had smooth skulls, six eyes each, and mouths filled with needle-sharp teeth. None of the stinks were equipped with the sort of cool packs Hale had seen in England, suggesting that the cold weather was to their liking, and sufficient to keep their core temperatures down.
This was a disappointment, since it had been Hale’s hope to carry out his self-assigned mission entirely unnoticed. But he wasn’t about to let four Hybrids prevent him from reaching his goal. So he shrugged off the pack, put the Rossmore aside, and brought the Fareye around to where he could use it. Then, placing his right glove on a rock, he set the rifle on top of it.
With that accomplished, Hale brought his eye down to the telescopic sight and began the not altogether unpleasant process of deciding which stink to kill first.
He needed to drop all four of the aliens one right after the other, if possible, both to clear a path across the bridge and to prevent them from spotting him before he had finished taking them down. Had the targets been human, Hale might have chosen to kill an officer or non-com first, but with no way to determine which freak was in charge, he had to rely on speed. So he made the decision to drop the sentries located at the north end of the bridge first, because they were farther away and had quicker access to cover.
Then would come the ticklish task of swinging the Fareye to the right and acquiring his other two targets, both of whom would probably be firing on him by then. Thanks to the distance, he would retain the advantage, however, so he couldn’t allow them to come closer. Because the last thing he wanted was for the alien with the Bullseye to tag him and send a dozen projectiles to seek him out. Or for the stink with the Auger to shoot through the rocks, and kill him that way.
Judging from the drift of the snowflakes the wind was blowing west to east, something Hale would need to take into consideration along with the ambient air temperature and the way the slug would drop slightly while in flight. With all of those factors in mind, he placed the crosshairs over the first Chimera’s head, made a tiny adjustment for the wind, and tilted the barrel up a fraction of an inch. Then, having taken a deep breath, he let most of it out. The trigger seemed to squeeze itself.
The Fareye nudged Hale’s shoulder, but thanks to the cylindrical silencer, the report was no louder than a baby’s cough. Hale saw a halo of blood appear as the Chimera’s head exploded, but resisted the desire to watch the body fall, knowing that every second was precious.
Target number two was turning circles at that point, trying to figure out where the bullet had come from, and that was when the second slug hit. The Hybrid went facedown in the snow and slid for a good two feet before finally coming to rest.
Swinging the rifle to the right in an attempt to acquire the third and fourth targets, he saw only one of his opponents. An object blurred past his telescopic sight, and Hale brought the rifle back, noting with a grim sense of satisfaction that one of the Hybrids was hiding behind a bridge support.
Time seemed to slow as Hale poured his entire being into making the critical shot. Slowly but surely the crosshairs drifted into place, Hale sent the necessary message to his right index finger, and felt it tighten on the trigger. The rifle coughed and a sudden spray of blood marked a hit as the third Chimera fell. It was only wounded, however, and a pink smear marked its progress as it began to drag itself through the slush.
Hale wanted to finish the Hybrid—needed to finish him—but there was the fourth one to consider. So he swung the rifle away, quartered the ground below, and came up empty. That was when the breeze flew a rank odor into Hale’s nostrils and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
He felt the Hybrid’s foul breath wash across the left side of his face, and swore as long needle-sharp fangs sank into his shoulder. There wasn’t enough time in which to bring the Fareye around, and the Chimera was too close for him to shoot it with the long-barreled weapon, anyway, so Hale made a grab for the double-edged commando knife that was fastened to his forearm. As he did, the stink lost its grip, but leaned in to press its advantage.
The Fairbairn Sykes fighting knife had been a gift from Lieutenant Cartwright in England, and as he jerked the weapon free of its sheath, Hale leaned away from his attacker. Then, bringing the double-edged blade around with his right hand, Hale drove its six inches of steel through one of the Chimera’s yellow-gold eyes.
Something warm squirted onto Hale’s fist as the Hybrid opened its jaws, screeched in pain, and reeled backward. Since it was still moving he guessed that the sliver of steel had missed the Chimera’s brain, but it was sticking out through the spot where a human nose would be. So it should have been dead, but bounced off the rock face behind it.
Having regained a momentary advantage, Hale threw himself to the left. The Rossmore was there, leaning against the pack, and he made a desperate grab for it, but the Hybrid was on him by then. Its skeletal fingers were wrapped around his throat as it pressed down with all its weight.
Hale felt dizzy, knew he would lose consciousness soon, and sought to push the stink away with his left hand while exploring the ground with his right. His fingers found and rejected two smaller
rocks before finally closing around a chunk of granite that had the right amount of heft.
Then, as the world began to fade to black, Hale brought the rock up with all of his strength. There was a loud thok as the makeshift weapon found its mark, and a sudden loosening of the creature’s grip as all of the alien’s remaining eyes rolled back in his head. Suddenly the weight was gone as the Chimera fell over sideways and allowed Hale to scramble clear.
Within seconds he was back on his feet. There was a loud boom as Hale put a load of double-ought buckshot into the unconscious stink. The blast blew a hole the size of a dinner plate through the creature’s chest.
It was tempting to fire again, just for the emotional satisfaction of it, but Hale knew he had to conserve ammo. So he stood there for a moment, chest heaving, his shoulder throbbing, as he fought to regain his composure.
Still in pain but functional once more Hale bent to retrieve his knife. There was a certain amount of suction, but having secured a good grip on the handle, he managed to jerk the weapon free. After cleaning the blade, and returning the weapon to its sheath, he reloaded the Fareye and slung both it and the pack over his good shoulder.
That accomplished, and with the shotgun at the ready, Hale went hunting.
The third stink wasn’t hard to find. Having made his way down onto the bridge deck, he picked up the Auger he had seen earlier. Then all Hale had to do was follow a trail through the blood-tinged slush to the north side of the span, where the badly injured Chimera was still dragging itself away. The ′brid snarled and snapped its teeth, but having left its weapon behind, there wasn’t anything it could do as Hale fired half a clip of Auger rounds into the alien.
The body jerked convulsively as the projectiles passed through both it and the bridge deck to splash into the river below.
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