Nuclear Rising
Page 25
“Stop it!” Eyre calls out as the bald man cowers in the creature’s hands. “I am the leader here – Drop that man. What do you want with us? If it’s that ball of energy in the sky, go have at it – do whatever you skulks want, but let us go.”
Next to me, Bree calls out, “Daddy, no!” but he pays no attention. I wrap my hand around her waist to keep her close.
A loud rumble rings out from deep within the skulk, the other skulks soon joining in with a high-pitched shriek that makes everyone cringe.
The monster tosses the bald man, knocking several of the Sempers over like a bunch of bowling pins, staring at Eyre with an intense hatred as its breathing quickens.
“Eyre,” it breathes out.
General Eyre smugly replies, “You know me apparently, you giant ball sack. Tell me your name.”
Another deep chuckle.
“Name was Hartley. Brett. You kill him.” The monster spits on the ground, punching one of its arms against a metal wall. “Now we skulk. We are Legion.”
Brig and General Eyre share a sideways glance at each other, their eyes flashing briefly in recognition.
“Hartley – there’s no way that’s you.” Eyre shrugs. “I seem to remember an arrogant, religious fool of a chaplain who thought the skulks could be saved or some BS like that. How’s that going for you anyway?”
The monster known as Legion screams out, and this time the skulks behind me gnash their teeth in the air and start to march forward a few paces.
“You knew him,” Legion growls. “You kill him…send him to death. From him, we born.”
A skulk starts to run toward Eyre, but as it reaches toward him, Legion grabs the creature, ripping off its head in front of us, splattering a reddish, black liquid along the ground.
“You keep doing that,” Eyre mutters. “You won’t have too many soldiers left there – Not a good idea. Take it from someone who knows. It kills me every time I have to leave a man behind.”
The loudest roar emanates out of Legion, this time making the crowd duck down and cover our ears.
“You. Left. Me.”
He beats on his chest with all four clenched fists.
From somewhere behind the line of skulks a roaring wave of red and black twice as tall as any of us emerges as raw piles of skulks on top of one another crash against each other, no longer held back. They claw at the air in front of them, an insatiable surge of hundreds, maybe thousands of skulks rushing in to have the first go at devouring our bodies.
“Fire!” Eyre yells loudly, stabbing a large knife into the shoulder of Legion as he pulls out an automatic rifle.
Every gun clicks in perfect synchrony.
I spy Bree cocking a shotgun, firing it into several skulks.
Flashes of light and loud pops reverberate across the empty streets.
A hail storm of a hundred bullets unleash toward the oncoming wave of skulks as Legion retreats into the crowd.
Immediately a line of skulks tumble to the ground.
A long skulk with red and yellow pustules falls to the ground as my bullets cut through it legs, leaving it to be trampled into the ground by the other skulks racing forward.
My hand starts to shake violently, but I breathe deeply, concentrating all my effort into knocking as many skulks back as I can.
For a minute it seems we might have a chance as piles of skulks begin to appear in front of us, our line of troops holding fast.
But then a gun jams.
Ammo starts to run low.
And the skulks start to advance.
The bald man near me screams as a skulk flies through the air, throwing his gun to the ground hastily and with dripping green jaws bites down hard into his shoulder.
Brig throws a knife right into the back of its head, immediately dropping the creature to the ground where several soldiers stab at it with large hunting knives, dismembering it in seconds.
Another man on the right flank is suddenly overwhelmed as three skulks reach his feet, dragging him into a crowd of waiting skulks where his limbs are ripped off and thrown threw the air, blood splattering their heads as they lick at the fresh liquid.
Brig has taken down at least fifty skulks on her own when she yells loudly to stay clear.
“Grenade!” She calls out, chucking a black ball into the crowd of monsters. Seconds later the frag explodes, sending skulks scattering in all directions as more limbs fly threw the air.
Never before had I seen such carnage.
More grenades are thrown into the hundreds of swarming monsters, blasting them left and right, but it only seems the more we kill, the more pour in.
A woman to the left of me calls out wildly for help – I look toward her direction where I see a little boy maybe eight years old being drug by a skulk that no longer has any legs, its jaws trying to bite the kid’s ankles.
I jump toward it, firing several bullets into the half-skulks head, where it immediately drops its hands from the child, and reaching down I grab the little boy, ushering him toward his mom.
By now, we’ve probably lost a few men, and our ammo is quickly running out.
“We need to advance to the bridge!” Brig calls out, glancing at Eyre who knocks a skulk down before cutting its head off. “We won’t last the night here!”
Eyre nods, realizing she’s right and barks out an order. “Everyone, begin pushing forward! Use the dead skulks as cover!”
And simultaneously we all push toward the pile of dead skulk bodies, the aroma of rotting flesh sinking into our nostrils as black liquid oozes from their limbs.
Bree stays on my heels as I book it toward a pile several feet high.
Another two men of ours are taken in the process, and more of the children are forced to pick up guns twice their sizes to fight.
As I peek around the corner of bodies where I sit, a female skulk reaches its hand through the pile, wrapping itself around my throat like tight vise grips.
Immediately my breath is stuck in its throat, my gun just out of range.
I struggle, but the creature is too strong.
My head starts to feel like its exploding.
And in a second, I see a flash of metal slice through the hand, leaving me gasping for air. As I look up to see my savior, Bree winks, a thin smile showing on her face.
We’re about three blocks away from the gate leading out of Vantage to the long bridge.
“Form up!” General Eyre yells out, creating lines of troops to march down the streets. Children and women line up in the middle as the men form on the outside. I push Bree into the middle right next to me. As Eyre surveys the remaining survivors, he shakes his head, and I can read his lips when he mutters, “Forty left.”
As we advance down the rocky main street out, continually firing left and right, a wave of fresh skulks crashes over us, red and black bodies bearing down on the women and children in the middle. Several women are bitten, fresh blood appearing on their ripped flesh as the kids hack and slash while men turn to rip the skulks off.
Total chaos erupts.
I lose sight of Bree as I fight a snapping skulk with no eyes away from my face.
It seems the ranks are broken when suddenly we heard a voice call out from the plaza.
“Hey ass wipes! Over here! I got what you want!”
Jake Manley stands looking like a complete idiot, holding a large x-ray gun above his head, shooting it toward the skulks. Immediately the skulks pause, more interested in the doses of radiation coming from his gun than the people they were about to attack.
“What’s that idiot doing?” Brig mutters.
As if to confirm her words, Jake, attempting to run down the street toward the blue orb in the sky, trips over his untied shoelaces, the gun scattering across the ground as his husky body thuds against it.
“Ugh,” Brig grunts in my ear, then begins to run toward him. As she does so though, Eyre grabs her, throwing her back toward the rest of us and yells, “Get them out of here! Now!”
Bree also sta
rts to run toward him until I half-tackle her, shaking my head as she glares at me furiously.
“Don’t. Bree. Your dad asked me to take care of you. We need to keep going.”
“But I can’t leave him again!” She starts to punch against my chest.
Glancing deep into her eyes, I say, “He’ll be fine – we won’t be though soon. I promised you, and your dad now that I would take care of you, and if I have to drag you out screaming, I will.”
A heavy sigh comes from her breath and she acquiesces.
We book it back into the group as Brig is trying to form the ranks again. We have a momentary pause from the bloodshed while at least twenty skulks rush past us toward Jake and Eyre. Bree eyeing them all nervously as we start to lose sight of Eyre.
A moment later, a bruised and bloodied Jake Manley appears as we cross in front of some the partially standing stores I had seen earlier. “Flo’s Florals and Frags” sits to the right of where we slowly crouch and advance.
“Where’s the general?” I ask Jake, pushing a gun into his hands, which he reluctantly takes.
He shrugs, replying, “He took down about ten skulks when he sent me through a side street and told me to run and not stop. I didn’t look back, but it sounded like he was wreaking havoc when I left.”
Bree breathes a tiny sigh of relief as the group advances.
We’ve knocked out a block and a half and now we can see the gates of Vantage leading out to the bridge beyond.
“Almost there!” Brig calls out, hope in her voice as she reaches for Helen, who holds an axe tightly at her side. “Keep pressing!”
Our lines are halfway through an intersection when I see a red hand reach out one of the windows, a couple houses from where we stand.
“There!” I call out as all the men on the right side fire toward the skulk now creeping out of the half-melted home.
Before long though, screaming erupts from the left side as a dozen skulks rush in, cutting us off from the first half of people who crept through the intersection first. Bree is swept forward in the commotion, leaving me behind with Jake Manley and a handful of children and about ten other men.
A skinny man with long, slicked back blond hair next to me falls on the ground, and before I can help him, another skulk presses into me, pushing me against a wall made of iron. My head knocks into the wall, and for a split second, the world around me grows hazy.
Searing pain erupts on my neck as I hear jaws clatter like shaking bones.
My eyes focus on a skulk with strands of black hair sinking its teeth in the area between my neck and shoulder. A second later my senses aroused, I pump a round of bullets into the creature's abdomen, splitting it into two halves which still twitch in my direction.
Fresh blood spilling on my chest, my head still aching, I sluggishly make my way back to the group.
Out of nowhere I see three knives appear in the heads of skulks bearing down on several screaming boys and girls, and Brig appears, fresh cuts of her own across her ripped pant legs.
“You okay?” She asks.
I nod slowly, and bracing my gun, crash full speed into a skulk that nearly bites into a toddler’s head. Immediately I fire several bullets as its head explodes into black ooze.
Glancing around, a litter of dead bodies lay across the ground, and I count ten dead men total among about fifty skulks.
“We can’t take much more, of this,” I mutter under my breath, rubbing my head as Brig smiles weakly at me and replies, “We keep going, no matter what. These children deserve everything we can give them.”
Glancing over at a five-year-old boy with dark, scraggly hair, I say, “Yeah, okay. We can do this.”
I reunite with Bree as she pumps her shotgun and the group of now about thirty people, including twelve children and eight women march toward the gate. Kids as young as six are now holding pistols and knives of one degree or another. Cuts, scrapes, and broken limbs abound on all of us.
Finally, we approach the gate, fighting off several skulks in the process, and I’m able to see a brief glimmer of hope.
“Helen!” Brig yells as she points toward the bridge, shooting a skulk that lands at Brig’s feet. “Get the women and children across the bridge over to the old drop zone – you should be safe there. We’ll watch the rear until you’re all across. At some point, the skulks should stop following us, unless the big one is somehow-“
But she’s cut off.
At first we hear a rumbling, then nothing, and suddenly an enormous figure crashes against several of the men, scattering them in all directions, grabbing one of them and biting his neck, red blood spraying the ground.
“Run!” Brig says, immediately Helen grabs several children, breaking out into a full sprint with the women.
“Hold on!” Jake Manley yells. “I’m coming too! You need a man to help you!”
Brig rolls her eyes as she throws several knives into the back of Legion, immediately distracting him from biting another of the men as he roars in anger.
I glance over to Bree, pushing her toward the bridge. “You need to get out of here too!”
She shakes her head, replying, “I’m not going anywhere – not without my dad.”
“Bree…” I mutter, but I can see her mind is made up, as she charges toward a pack of skulks surrounding Legion, scattering buckshot in all directions.
“Keep firing on the big guy!” Brig barks out to the rest of us and we unbridle a round of bullets into the red monster.
Before long though, several of the men have run out of bullets, charging into the creature with knives, slashing at its legs.
With two of its giant arms, it grabs the men, choking their necks as it throws them lifelessly into the riverbanks outside of the bridge.
I glance toward Helen and the rest of the group as they charge across the bridge, now halfway, but they’ve stopped as a horde of skulks now stand between them and the safe zone.
“Brig!” I yell, pointing at the bridge, but she’s hit square in the stomach by Legion’s arms.
I glance at the grotesque man, black ooze streaming down his raw flesh, and yet he doesn’t slow down. At this rate, none of us would be left.
I think of Celeste, picturing her glowing blue eyes.
I think of our child, dark brown curly hair like mine.
And I think of Bree, her sweet smile and light laugh.
And then I hear a familiar, deep voice yell out from somewhere in front of us.
“Hartley!” General Eyre calls, emerging from a pile of metal as he swings a large axe into a pack of skulks behind Legion.
Legion grumbles, “Hartley. Dead. We are Legion.”
“Whatever you pompous son of a bitch,” Eyre says. “Chomp on this.”
With that, he throws a grenade square into Legion’s belly, blasting the creature off his feet as it stumbles into a wicked skewer of an old support beam that had toppled over from the guard tower. Splintering through Legion’s side like a giant spear, he roars loudly as Eyre runs past him to join the rest of us.
“Daddy!” Bree yells, wrapping her arms around Eyre, who is bleeding profusely from a large gash in his side.
“We need to go,” Eyre mutters to Brig. “Or there won’t be much left – you know what to do as soon as we cross, right Brigadier General?”
Brig nods, a wicked smile showing on her face.
Just as we begin crossing however, a long arm reaches out, grabbing Eyre by the waist and pulls him back through the gate.
“General!” Brig yells, pushing Bree back out of the way as she screams loudly.
Legion holds Eyre between two of his hands, staring at him in the eyes as he breathes heavily against his face, his longue, contorted tongue licking the air in front of Eyre.
The skulks have stopped advancing and now a hundred or so of them that are left make a tight circle around Legion.
A deep, guttural laugh resonates.
“You. Die. You become skulk. Eyre. First. You suffer.”
Eyre screams, a horrible, wrenching noise that can only be described as blood-curdling.
With what ammo and weapons we have, we charge into Legion, who drops Eyre with a loud thud to the ground, laughing wildly as he swipes clawed fingers into us.
Brig flies against a pillar, slumping as her head knocks against hard metal. A couple more of the men are sliced in their bellies as packs of skulks drag them into their mass.
I’m about to make one last charge when I have an idea.
If the skulks are attracted to energy…
I throw my bag to the ground.
Reach in and pull out the phone I hadn’t turned on for so long, the white screen lighting up the darkened day.
Immediately a bright light shines as I throw the phone into the crowd of skulks.
Just as quickly, they crawl all over each other, wildly flailing limbs to grab the little piece of technology.
It’s just enough time for me to reach in and grab one last thing.
“Stop!” Legion yells, grabbing several crazed skulks. “Stop!”
Before he can do much though, I jump into his chest, placing the metal disk that had just saved my life hours earlier.
Legion glances down, a confused look across his wide set, bulging eyes.
I flip him off as I push the glowing blue button in the middle of the disk.
“Hopefully this thing is one-size fits all,” I mutter.
The hulking monster is enveloped in a glowing blue shield. He tries to swipe at me, but I back off too quick for him to grab me.
Grabbing Eyre off the ground, I help him to his feet while several of the remaining men rush over to pick up their General, who’s only cursing them and demanding to be left behind.
I glance back at Legion.
The swarm of skulks have suddenly left the tiny phone behind and now crawl all over the eight-foot-tall monster of a man, digging with all their might into the magical hazmat suit’s shield as they gnash their teeth into it.
Legion tries batting them away, but no longer under control, they rip and try to feed on the energy shield like a frenzy of sharks, which only pins down the hulking monster to the ground.