Battleground Earth

by Gerry Griffiths

  Frank looked around and saw hundreds of people running to their posts.

  A voice came over Wanda’s walkie-talkie. “Wanda, this is Crandall, can you hear me?”

  Wanda unclipped the two-way radio from her belt and answered, “Yes, Crandall. Do we have a breach?”

  “Not exactly. There’s a tenement fire behind Bay Street.”

  “We’ll be right there.” Wanda clipped her radio back on her belt. Most of the neighborhood was apartment complexes and adjoining two-story single-family houses and had suffered structural damage from past fires. Only a few buildings remained standing with the rest of the areas nothing but rubble and resembling a bombsite.

  Frank and Wanda ran parallel with the retaining wall.

  Bay Street stretched along the perimeter of one side of Fort Mason at a higher elevation and overlooked the encampment. It was impossible to see anything on the street from below which made it the fort’s weakest point of defense.

  Frank and Wanda dashed behind a line of fighters positioned at a four-foot tall wall of sandbags stretching halfway across the base.

  Fifty feet back was a second perimeter of forty vehicles parked side by side, some humvees and armored personnel carriers commandeered from an abandoned National Guard armory, but mostly pickup trucks that had standup M60 machineguns mounted on the cargo beds that were often used by ragtag rebel fighters. They were all facing the direction of the grassy hillock called Great Meadow that sloped up to Bay Street.

  More infantry fighters and armored vehicles were positioned to fend off attacks from the other three sides. Fifteen gunboats were loosely moored at the three piers, ready in the event of a maritime attack.

  As an added advantage, 20 mobile cherry pickers were strategically placed about the battlement. The cages were extended twenty feet in the air and were used as lookout platforms. Each guard was armed with a six-barrel rotary M134 minigun that could fire 6,000 rounds per minute.

  “We need a bird’s eye view,” Wanda said to Frank and stopped at the first aerial lift they came to. She rapped on the metal motor housing to get the attention of the lookout up above. The man glanced down and immediately lowered the cage.

  Frank removed the safety chain. Wanda climbed aboard then Frank. All four sides of the cage were reinforced with one-inch thick steel plates to deflect low-caliber bullets but was useless against armor-piercing projectiles.

  The guard operated the control box and they started up. The lift arm extended as far up as it could go, giving them the best view possible. It also meant that they were sitting ducks to any hostile snipers.

  Wanda got on her walkie-talkie. “Turn off the alarms.”

  A few seconds passed and the sirens went quiet.

  “So what are you seeing?” Wanda asked the guard.

  “Two blocks back.”

  “I see it,” Frank said. Smoke was funneling out of a broken second floor window of a four-story apartment building. Orange flames belched out of the structure.

  “Has there been any activity over there?” Wanda asked.

  “I haven’t seen anyone,” the guard said, “but I did hear a car engine.”

  “Do you think there’s hostiles out there; maybe they set the fire?” Frank said.

  “Doesn’t make any sense.” Wanda watched as the fire licked up the side of the building. “There isn’t enough fuel out there for it to spread this way.” Bay Street was a natural firebreak, and even if embers did blow down on Fort Mason, most of the buildings had Spanish tiled roofs that would likely protect the structures and prevent them from catching fire.

  But on the other hand, there were 200 vehicles with full gasoline tanks, and a fenced area with over 100 fifty-five gallon drums of petroleum and diesel fuel, and a tinderbox of ammunition inside Herbst Pavilion; so it didn’t hurt to be vigilant because if all that were to catch fire, it would the most spectacular fireworks show in San Francisco history.

  Not to mention that, if Fort Mason were to become a raging inferno, there was only one means of escape—the bay. Even with the 15 gunboats, they’d only be lucky to get a hundred people to safety.

  “Jesus, will you look at that!” the guard yelled.

  The black mass poured down over the grassy hill like a giant oil spill. It was the largest intrusion Wanda and Frank had seen in a long while. With their bodies pressed together, the cockroaches looked like a single sheet of medieval chainmail armor; each roach being eight feet long.

  Everyone behind the sandbags opened up on the invading horde. The gunners in the row of vehicles directly behind fired their weapons. The low-caliber rounds ricocheted off the roaches’ hard shells. Only the high-powered bullets were able to punch through, and when they did, white goop shot out of the roaches’ bodies.

  The downward assault turned into an avalanche as the roaches skittered down the hill, stumbling over their dead, and tumbled down the retainer wall.

  The only thing separating the fighters and the onslaught was the sandbags and a thick veil of gun smoke.

  Wanda looked down and saw the roaches clambering over the sandbags. She could hear the screams and yelling even with the guard standing next to her, firing his minigun. Instead of retreating, the militia fighters and the Eco-Marines stood their ground and unleashed everything they had.

  The roaches that stormed over the barrier were met with strong opposition. Many of the Eco-Marines were armed with long bayonets and were jumping on the backs of the roaches. Even though the roaches’ bodies were completely covered with protective plates, there was just enough space between the overlapping shells behind the head to insert a sharp blade, which was enough to sever the ganglia controlling the nervous system and paralyze the creatures.

  Only when the fighters were out of ammunition, did they fall back.

  “What the hell?” Frank turned and looked up. “Get down!”

  They ducked in the cage just as a helicopter swooped over their heads.

  Wanda spun around. A moving wall of fire converged onto Great Meadow. The cockroaches taking up the rear were burning alive and had been the reason for the stampede.

  The gunner in the helicopter fired down on the flaming insects as the aircraft hovered over the hillside. Each roach killed in the barrage, stumbled, tripping up the bugs racing behind it. Many of them ended up on their backs, smothering the flames, but it didn’t save them, as they were already dead.

  Wanda glanced down at the battlefield below and saw some of the wounded on the ground lying amongst over a hundred defeated insects. Most of the gunfire had subsided. The gunner in the cage stopped firing.

  “You don’t think they purposely started that fire to stampede those roaches?” Wanda said. It wasn’t the first time the hostiles had tried to attack Fort Mason but it was the first time they had devised a way to use the bugs to their advantage.

  “You have to admit, it was pretty ingenious,” Frank said.

  “And where did this chopper come from?” Wanda asked, as the aircraft banked toward the helipad between one of the barracks and the waterfront.

  “Not sure,” Frank said. “Let’s go find out. I think a ‘thank you’ may be in order.”

  The lookout lowered the cage to the ground and let Wanda and Frank out. They hurried across the crowded parking lot, stopping briefly to congratulate small groups as the able-bodied pitched in and helped the wounded over to the triage.

  Wanda and Frank reached the helipad and waited for the chopper’s engine to shut down. A young man jumped down out of the side door and gave Wanda a big smile.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  12

  Even though Cass was weary and desperately wanted to get some sleep, she knew she was wasting her time. It didn’t make any difference that she was bundled up in her sleeping bag with her favorite foam pillow and was comfortably strapped in so she wouldn’t float out and injure herself because no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t clear her mind.

  Losing sleep worrying about work or something trivial tha
t later ended up resolving itself was one thing, but knowing she had only a few precious days left to live was enough to keep anyone up at night. Or day. It didn’t really matter what time it was floating up in space.

  Cass undid the strap and unzipped the side of her bag. She wormed her way out of her sleeping bay—slightly bigger than a gym locker—and propelled herself into the Harmony’s cylindrical passage through the open hatchway of the berthing port and into the laboratory of the U. S. module, Destiny.

  “Hello, Rob. How are things?” she said to the sole occupant. Normally she would love to kid around and joke with the humanoid robot even if the lifeless robonaut would never respond.

  Rob was an advanced spin-off version from the Dextrous Robotic Program but hadn’t been fully tested as the scientist assembling the robot had been killed before completing his assignment.

  From the waist up—Rob was currently without legs, as the limbs hadn’t been attached—the robonaut was modeled to look almost human. Its torso and arms were white and covered with a flame retardant material. The abdomen section contained the computer components that controlled all mechanical movements and other functions such as speech and reasoning.

  The upper parts of the arms rotated in the shoulder sockets much like a child’s doll and could be removed for modifications and repairs. Each mechanical hand was designed like that of a person; a thumb and four fingers with touch sensors on the tips and had a high degree of flexibility and dexterity.

  The striking part about Rob was its head, which looked like a brass Power Ranger helmet. There were no facial features, just a dark visor that was a window for four cameras inside the cranium and an aperture below that could have been mistaken for a small mouth but was really a viewer for a depth perception camera.

  Without legs, Rob looked like it was wading waist deep in the bulkhead. Rob’s battery pack and energy source were tethered separately to the bulkhead.

  Cass made her way over to the round 20-inch nadir observation window often used for taking breathtaking photographs of Earth.

  Now it was a portal into hell.

  As the space station made its sweep over the daylight side of the planet, a dark shadow passed over the glass. Cass watched as the behemoth asteroid—the biggest in the belt—blocked out the sun. She’d been monitoring the planetoid for weeks and had witnessed its destructive force. Just like many of the smaller asteroids, it would only be a matter of time before the massive rock experienced orbital decay and plummeted through the atmosphere.

  13

  The last few nights, Wade Waters had been keeping watch on his deck, not so much for the great view he had from his home, tucked in the hills a short walking distance from Emerald Lake, but because his neighbor, Jack Stonewall, had spotted looters in the area.

  Most of Wade’s friends and the people that lived around him had packed up long ago and left to go live in militia encampments where it was said to be safer. But there were those that refused to leave and remained in their homes defending their families and property, much like Wade was doing. Many of them had either been brutally killed by murderous thieves or by the damn mutant bugs. It seemed lately the hills were crawling with them.

  He’d slept on and off for maybe a total of two hours, waking up to the tiniest sound which a few months ago might have been a field mouse or rabbit, but not any more, not with those things out there. Usually, it was a nervous bird, hiding and flittering in the branches of the nearby oak by the side of his rustic home, but even they were becoming scarce. Wade couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard a whippoorwill or a bluejay.

  His back ached from sitting in the redwood patio chair even though it had a padded seat and back. He had his 10-shot Marlin lever action carbine draped across his lap, resting on the wood armrests, and wore a shoulder rig with a Browning nine-millimeter in the holster just inside his heavy coat. It had gotten so cold in the night he had pulled his black watch cap down over his ears.

  Looking out beyond the porch railing, he could see parts of Redwood City, what was left of it, and the old salt flats by the bay. The sun was beginning to crest over the easterly mountain range.

  Wade picked his rifle up and leaned it against the side of his chair. He pushed himself out of the seat and stood, stretching his arms over his head to straighten out the kinks in his body. A hot cup of coffee sounded good. He could make a pot and surprise Debra before she woke up.

  He heard a high-pitched scream from the house. It was his daughter, Amy.

  Wade grabbed his rifle and ran across the deck. He opened the sliding glass door, dashing inside.

  “Mommy, Mommy!” Amy screamed.

  Wade charged down the hallway. Debra was standing outside Amy’s bedroom, holding their frightened daughter.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Wade asked.

  “There’s a spider in my room,” Amy said.

  “What kind?”

  “It was big and black.”

  “My God, Wade. It could be a black widow,” Debra said.

  “Did you see it?”

  “No. I heard Amy scream and when I came out, she was standing in the hall.”

  “Okay, you guys stay back,” Wade said. “Take Amy into our room.”

  “Watch yourself,” Debra said. She put her arm around Amy, shuffled her into the next room, and shut the door.

  Wade raised his rifle and levered a round into the chamber. He nudged the door with the toe of his boot and it swung halfway open. He could see only a portion of the room. Amy’s dresser and dollhouse were against one wall along with her toy box. He could see the foot of her small bed, but not the window. Amy had been persistent, complaining her room was too hot and kept insisting her window be left open while she slept. Wade had told her positively no, that there were evil monsters outside.

  Obviously he hadn’t gotten through to her.

  Maybe if he could have shown her the giant waterbugs he’d seen skimming across Emerald Lake, eating the trout and bass, she would have been more receptive and quit nagging him about the damn window.

  He pushed the door the rest of the way until it bumped against the wall.

  “Wade, you okay out there?” Debra called out from the other room.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Quit yelling.” He stepped over the threshold. Amy was right. The room was hot. Cold sweat dripped down the inside of his flannel shirt.

  He rammed the rifle stock against his shoulder, peered over the sight, and scanned the room with his gun muzzle.

  The window was open.

  Shit.

  Then he saw it crawling on the wall over the rainbow and unicorn wallpaper.

  Debra had been right.

  It was a black widow.

  And it was huge.

  Wade walked over with his rifle, waited until the spider crept onto the hardwood floor...

  And squashed it under his boot.

  He closed the window and made sure it was locked. Later he’d nail it shut.

  “Okay, it’s safe to come out now!”

  14

  “I should have done this long before now,” Jake Reynolds said, standing on the loading platform as more flatbed trucks carrying high stacks of sectioned cyclone fencing pulled in. The North Bay Militia leader gripped his coffee mug in his right hand and took a drink. His left shirtsleeve was folded and pinned to his shoulder.

  “Crandall asked around the barracks and put together a crew that used to work construction,” Wanda said. “He said the fence will be up by the end of the day. They’ll top it off with razor wire.”

  “How high?” Jake asked.

  “Twelve feet. They’re also going to run generators at night and electrify the fence.”

  “That should keep them out.”

  “Maybe, but it’ll slow them down.”

  “Were you surprised to see your son?” Jake asked, trying his best not to smirk.

  “Yes. How in the world did you swing that?”

  “Wasn’t me. It was that husband of
yours.”

  “Frank got Ryan transferred out here?” Wanda said, astonished.

  “Seems he knows how to pull some strings. He never told you?”

  “No.”

  “Guess he wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “It was a surprise all right.”

  “Have Crandall keep me posted on their progress,” Jake said.

  “I’ll tell him.” Wanda turned and headed across the loading dock. Reaching the top of the steps, she hurried down and walked briskly to a picnic area set up near the entrances to the piers where her family was enjoying an outdoors breakfast.

  “Hope you saved something for me.” Wanda stepped over the bench attached to the picnic table and sat between Ryan and Frank, who was already pouring a cup of coffee from a thermos.

  “Here, it’s still hot.” Frank placed her mug on the table.

  “Thank you, dear.” Wanda gave Frank a quick kiss then turned and gave Ryan a peck on the cheek.

  “Mom, I’m not twelve,” Ryan griped even though it was plain to see he really didn’t mind his mother’s affection.

  “Yeah, kissing’s for sissies,” Dillon said, sitting across the table next to Ally.

  “How about I give you a big whopper?” Wanda said. She reached over the table and puckered her lips.

  “Yuck,” Dillon said and slid off the bench to hide under the table.

  “Get up here, mister,” Ally said, pulling her little brother back onto the seat.

  “Did you know Ryan has his own tank?” Dillon said, excitedly.

  “Well, it’s not mine. I’m just part of a crew, me and a bunch of other guys.”

  “How was it out there?” Frank asked Ryan.

  “Yeah, Ryan, how was it? Kill a lot of bugs?” Dillon shifted on the bench and got onto his knees.

  “Plenty. Nebraska got hit pretty hard by one of those mega asteroids. Must have busted up into a million pieces because the whole state was crawling with giant locusts.”