by SD Tanner
“Do not fire! Friendly ahead!”
Switching to reality viewing, the man sprinting to their position was wearing a camouflage uniform he knew all too well.
“Make a hole!”
Tank slipped slightly to the left, and he yanked Lexie to the right, allowing the unprotected soldier to run into the middle of their perimeter.
“Close ranks!”
The critters, that had been hard on the heels of the man, were now confronted by Tank, Tuck and Trigger, who wasted no time tearing into them with their armored hands. Assuming their saved man would know where to put himself, he aimed his gun at the critters still pouring from the open door of the building.
Always aware that in close combat they could accidentally shoot one another with their high caliber weapons, he shouted, “Auto target only!”
His computer took control of his inbuilt weapon, while he dealt with the critters appearing at his side, clawing at the exposed soldier between them. Lexie turned to face him, grabbing critters as they broke through their perimeter. Slamming them fiercely into the ground and then the wall, she fought on their six, while they focused their firepower directly ahead. Using her body to shield the soldier, she was hammering at any critter within reach.
They needed to reduce their exposure to the critters by getting inside one of the buildings. The man had entered the corridor from a building at the end, and he guessed there might be more survivors holed up inside.
“Last building on the right!”
Making his way to the door, Tank stood outside of it, continuing to fire while punching critters. Tuck entered first followed by Trigger, and he pushed the man inside after them. Lexie was still stepping backwards, only now she had her weapon on auto targeting as she fended off the critters closest to her.
“Tank, cover our six!”
Pushing Lexie in first, he followed her. Tank appeared behind him, slamming the door closed in the face of the angry critters. Inside was a corridor that looked like any other, only the walls were a glossy white. There was crushed glass scattered across the floor and bullet holes pitted the walls. Critters were appearing at the broken half height windows to the offices on either side of the corridor, screeching wildly at their arrival. The soldier was trying to get his attention and he opened a channel to his helmet.
“…storage room.”
“Say again.”
“Twenty-five survivors at the end of the corridor in the storage room.”
“Roger that,” he replied abruptly. “Ceasefire! Ceasefire! Survivors at the end of the corridor.”
Their high caliber weapons, so perfect for killing critters, would cut through the thin interior metal walls as if they weren’t there. The corridor was seventy yards long and only six feet wide. They couldn’t travel down it side by side and still be able to fight. Critters were bursting from each side of the corridor from the destroyed offices.
Quickly assessing the threat level, he ordered, “Lexie, on our six! Tank, in front of me. Tuck, Trigger, on point.”
Tank was so large and heavily protected he could handle the critters on both sides. Tuck and Trigger could fight forward, while Lexie could deal with any stragglers they left alive behind them. He would protect the soldier. The number of critters in the small building shocked him, and he tried to understand why they’d clustered in this one location. It was as if the critters had left their most able to attack this building, while allowing the others to starve. It was yet another sign of their intelligence and determination.
Tuck and Trigger were efficiently grabbing critters and slamming them back into the rooms as they tried to leave. The walls were only made of a thin metal sheet and they were crumpling under the assault. Pieces of metal frames and wires were hanging from walls that were being torn apart under the ferocity of the bodies hitting them. Critter limbs were being torn from their sockets and left lying in the corridor, only to be trodden on by their heavy feet. Above him, critters were running along the ceiling, dropping onto his helmet and clawing at the man. They seemed determined to get him, but the man wisely tucked himself closer to Tank, ducking away from his arms every time he swung them wide to catch yet another critter.
For such a short corridor, it seemed to take forever to get to the door at the end. There was a wide smear of blood against the back wall, and he assumed it had belonged to another soldier. Tuck and Trigger stood on either side of the door, beating away any critter that came too close. The door opened and a young man stood looking at him with his mouth hanging open.
After he pushed the man past Tank and into the room, he shouted, “Lexie, get in!” Once Tuck and Trigger followed her, he shouted, “Tank, after me.”
Walking into the room, he felt Tank hit his armor, and Tuck and Trigger slammed the door closed. In front of him, there were rows of racks filled with food, water and other supplies. The young man who’d opened the door was standing in front of the racks staring at him in shock.
Flipping his lower visor up, he said, “Thanks.”
“F..f..for what?”
Tuck flipped his own lower visor up, and slapped the skinny young man so hard he fell against the rack. “For opening the fuckin’ door, kid.”
Tank was leaning against the door, and Lexie was looking down the corridor between the racks. He was still using reality viewing, and assumed she could see more than he could. “Lexie, what do you see?”
Sounding slightly awed, she replied, “People…lots of people.”
“Gimme a number.”
“Twenty-five…well, twenty-six if you count this guy,” the young man replied, while looking at the soldier. “Where are the other two?
“They didn’t make it,” the soldier replied grimly.
Another older man was making his way towards them between the racks. “I’m Colonel Boris Meecham with the 3rd Marine Division on assignment to NORAD. Who are you?” Coming to a stop in front of him, he added, “What are you?”
What he didn’t need was another Colonel with plans bigger than his brain, but he kept his irritation in check. “I’m Leon and this is my squad of Navigators.”
“Navigators?”
“Yeah, this tech belongs to CaliTech. They’re a privately owned company in California. They were developing this stuff for the army before the critters turned up.”
“Who’s your commanding officer?”
“We don’t have one.”
“But you’re with the army, right?”
He flicked his top visor up so Boris could see his eyes and gave him a steady look. “There’s no command structure left.”
“So, you’re running renegade?”
“No, we’re fighting back against the critters, but we don’t work for the army anymore.”
“But you are an army?”
With his helmet up, he could hear the critters throwing themselves at the door still blocked by Tank. Now was not the time to get into this argument with the Colonel. He still had to get the people out of the bunker and topside. Once they were above ground, he and the squad could make sure NORAD was clear, and they could sort out who was who then.
“With all due respect, Colonel, this is not the time. We need to get you out of here. There’s another Colonel topside and he can answer any questions you have.” Not waiting to hear the man’s reply, he turned to Lexie. “I’m gonna need you to take a look outside. Can you see through these walls?”
“Not as well as a regular wall. I mean, I can see into the immediate corridor, but too many layers of metal is messing up my visor, so I can’t see across the whole building.”
“Okay, what did you see when we were coming in here?”
“Lotsa critters.”
“Gimme a number.”
Lexie began to move her hands around in the air, and he knew she was scanning through the footage of their fight into the room. After a few moments, she said uncertainly, “Maybe forty are still out there.”
Inwardly he breathed a sigh of relief. Forty was a number that fiv
e Navigators could deal with. Providing they had their onboard computers identify the survivors, they wouldn’t shoot at them, which meant they could use their weapons.
Looking back at the Colonel, he asked, “Do you know if there are any other groups of survivors?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I doubt it. This was the storage area for food, so if they’re out there then they’re as hungry as all hell.”
Ark had said a full complement in NORAD was about seven hundred people, and there were only twenty-six left. It was a catastrophic loss of skills, and he wondered if they still had enough people who knew how to maintain the satellites or use the missiles.
“Okay, Colonel, you need to keep the people at the back of this room while we clear the building. Once we’re done we’ll take you all topside.”
Flipping his helmet down so it covered his face again, he said, “Trigger, stay here and keep these people covered. Tank, I want you on point. Tuck, you follow him. Lexie, you’re on our six. Keep me posted on the number of critters.”
Trigger began to usher the people back to the corner of the room, while Tuck prepared to open the door again. Tank was almost the size of the doorway and he stood ready to step forward. When Tuck opened the door, critters flew at Tank in a frenzy. Tank launched a grenade into the corridor, while he and Tuck grabbed the critters clinging to his armor. The grenade exploded, but the shrapnel could do nothing to their armor, and they didn’t even bother to flinch.
Striding forward, Tank looked like a robot as he stomped heavily and turned sharply to the right. He let fly another grenade, before continuing to stomp out of his line of sight. He and Tuck followed him into the corridor that was rapidly filling with damaged critter parts. With Tank continuing to fire grenades, the critters were scrambling through the broken windows of the office, clearly trying to avoid the blasts. He was again reminded of how quickly they adapted to threats, and it spoke of an intelligence that was well above that of an insect. They were not cockroaches, of that he was very sure.
He needed Lexie to get out of the building so she could scan for more threats. “Lexie, get forward.”
Tuck immediately fell into the rear position, and began to walk through the half walls that had once had glass above them. Tearing the office wall open by walking through it, he was grabbing at the critters trying to hide inside the room. Seeing his actions, he and Tank walked through the walls of the other offices, cornering critters and firing their depleted uranium-tipped bullets into their rubbery bodies. In a normal engagement with this much gunfire, he would have been nearly overwhelmed by the sound and dust, but with his Navigator suit everything was happening in an almost distanced way. The explosions were muted, and the dust was merely making it slightly harder to see with his reality viewing. Far from feeling stressed in combat, he was enjoying a little payback.
Once they’d cleared the building, he said, “Good work. Tuck. Open the door. Tank. Shoot at anything outside of the building. Lexie, I need a report as soon you have one.”
While they followed his orders, he stood slightly behind watching them work. It was a shame Ark couldn’t see how well they were doing. He would study the footage later, and no doubt offer good suggestions on where they could improve. A Navigator squad could take risks he’d never thought possible, and he and Ark were still learning the best ways to use them.
Before Tank stepped out of the building he fired another grenade, and he assumed there were more critters on the road.
Confirming his suspicions, Lexie said, “You’ve got another twenty out here.”
Now able to use their weapons, twenty was no problem. “Lexie, start scouting around us and report what you find. Tuck and Tank, let’s clear this road.”
Using their freestanding weapons to fire controlled bursts at the critters, their hardened black bodies exploded onto the concrete road.
Lexie called, “Five critters on my tail. I’m bringing them to you.”
Just as she promised, she appeared from a side road with the critters chasing her. It was good trick and they cut them down before they were even close.
“Nice one, Lex,” Tank said approvingly.
“Yeah, do that some more, Lexie,” Tuck added.
It was a good trick, and she continued to scout the chamber, attracting the attention of critters who foolishly followed her into their ambush. The road was covered in critter body parts that were becoming crushed under their boots, and by the time they’d run out of critters to kill, they were all low on ammo and power.
“Okay, we’ll do a final scout, but I think we’re good to go.”
With fifteen buildings to walk through and clearing the roads between them, it took another four hours to secure the site. They didn’t find much. There were no bodies other than the critters, and he suspected the people had been eaten. Many of the buildings showed evidence of gunfire, but surprisingly they were largely still intact. They found silent rooms filled with screens still displaying images, and it was as if the people had simply vanished, leaving their cups of coffee and half-eaten meals to rot. They hadn’t found any goo and he wondered if, without sufficient food, the critters hadn’t been able to make it.
While they made their way along the corridor to where the survivors were still hiding in the storage room, a woman stepped out of a side road.
Flipping his visor up, he asked, “Are you okay?”
She was rail thin and her hair was a knotted mess. “Yeah…”
“Are there more of you?”
Shaking her head vehemently, she replied unsteadily. “N…no. I was in the water reservation room.” Looking around nervously, she asked, “Is there any food?”
Clearly, the woman had been trapped in what was essentially a utility area in the bunker, and although she’d had water, food must have been scarce.
“Lexie, go let the others out and tell them to bring food.”
While Lexie trotted along the corridor to the building, he asked, “What’s your name?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure.”
NORAD was clearly another site where the critters had broken the people. Flipping his visor up, he looked around the buildings that were now heavily pitted thanks to their gunfire. The critters had tried to break NORAD and failed. They might only have some twenty or so people left, but he was confident they would get it working again. Broken didn’t mean defeated.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Defining moment (Ark)
They’d managed to retrieve thirty-one people from NORAD. Amber and Dom were still studying the footage they’d downloaded and he was assessing what skills were left. They’d added Colonel Boris Meecham to the grid and he and Bill were having an intense discussion.
“The satellites have to stay up,” Bill said intently.
“We can probably keep them in orbit, but without maintenance they will eventually fail.”
“How long?”
“Hard to say. It depends on how much damage they take on up there.”
“But it’s not going to happen tomorrow.”
“No, and there’s more than a few anyway.”
“What about the missiles?”
“They work, but you told me the critters react well to radiation.”
“True, but there’s a nest in Pueblo Pintado we might need to blast open.”
“We don’t need to use nukes for that. We can go with a regular bomb.”
“How deep can it blast?”
“Not very, why?”
“They’ve burrowed something underground, but we don’t know how far.”
“We have missiles designed to drill. They hit the ground and burrow before exploding.”
“To what depth?”
“I don’t know. We’d have to check our files.”
He thought both men were trying to run before they could walk. The situation was critical, but it was going to be a long and drawn out battle. If there was a nest in Albuquerque, then he believed there were probably more. The critters were smar
t, and they wouldn’t be dependent on a single location they weren’t even bothering to hide. Once the satellites were under their control again, he would have them look for the rest of the nests he was sure were scattered across the country and probably the world.
Bill was often right about many things, but he was still trying to solve the problem with a single blow. That wasn’t how he saw it. The cities were now under siege, their people were desperate, and the critters were developing new weapons. Their enemy was more organized than they were and they needed to catch up. Any creature that could wipe out their ability to defend themselves, and transform or kill seventy-five percent of their population in a month, was unlikely to roll over without a fight.
The medical team were analyzing the critters they’d captured. The weapons team were testing a range of ways to kill them. Bill had headed the mission to save NORAD. He was working with Leon to make the Navigator team effective. They still didn’t have an army, and Bill’s attempt to enlist the preppers had yet to be proven. Jonesy had decided to become a fully functioning Navigator, but had lost his mind when he lost his family, and was now hell-bent on becoming a one-man killing machine.
Something was missing and he knew what it was. They had no leader. Each of them were independently taking actions without a cohesive and single plan. It wouldn’t work. Their enemy was too smart and they wouldn’t win this fight by accident.
While he worried about their lack of leadership, Lexie opened a private chat room on the grid. “Ark?”
“What is it, kiddo?” He asked warmly.
“Did you see the footage?”
“Yeah, you did good.”
She seemed to hesitate and then asked, “What are we doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I just don’t get it. We went to the nest and got our asses whipped. We went to Albuquerque and only managed to set twenty or so people free. Then we came here and found another thirty people, but if twenty-five percent of the people are alive then there’s seventy-five million people left. How are we gonna have any effect by saving them twenty to thirty at a time?”