by Dalton Wolf
“I’m Calvin Hobbes!” Calvin shouted. He actually stepped out and showed the man his driver’s license, holding it tight in the dangerous crosswind. The distinct moan of the Dragon’s twin diesels rumbled faintly in the distance as the powerful train approached the civilian barricade. But the intensity of wind and thunder from the storm threatened to drown out all exterior sound.
“That train is with us! It will not attempt to breach the wall, but our guy needs to get close enough to join us here!” Calvin explained, looking to the south. Part of the Ogden barricade crossed the tracks between two broken lines of trees, blocking the train’s progress, but judging from the sound, Hef hadn’t slowed.
“Thank you, sir!” the guard nodded and let them pass. “We are aware of your vehicle and its mission!”
So involved was Calvin with the progress of his friend in the train that he didn’t even stop to wonder how they were so well informed on his mission.
“Pull into that area over there, sir!” the officer shouted over the storm, trying to ignore the various sirens blaring throughout the compound “This entire area currently within this fence will be yours! We will be building more in the coming days!” The officer pointed to a long line of pod housing three pods deep along the wall and possibly twenty or thirty pods long with several larger facilities fastened into the structure.
“Get in there and take shelter!” Calvin shouted, pointing for the others to take refuge within the structure. Felicia jetted away into the compound with the other two vehicles close behind, leaving Calvin at the entrance.
“Where do you guys sleep then, Corporal?” Calvin asked the soldier.
“We sleep in those Quonset huts over there!” he pointed to the huts along a fence line connected to the concrete walls. They were basically being bunked out in the open in front of the wall where those on the wall could keep them under their sights.
“Shouldn’t you be getting to some kind of shelter?”
“We don’t leave our post!” the man shouted back.
“Doesn’t look like those are very well protected anyway!” Calvin called over repeated peals of thunder.
Both men were getting whipped by powerful blasts of wind.
“We’ll see about getting you some better armor for those buildings!” Calvin promised, knowing Hef could have his company ship in the materials. “Our friend can get you some bulletproof walls! No sense in you all taking random shots from out there in the woods from pissed off villagers!”
The man’s eyes widened in appreciation and he nodded in return. “I—uh, thank you sir!” he looked to his buddy and both smiled back. “Lieutenant Stephens, sir! Glad to meet you!”
“I am coming up on the barricade now, Calvin!” Hef shouted over the earbud. “There are too many vehicles parked there for me to bust through.”
“He’s right, Calvin!” Lucy informed him, looking up from the monitor in concern. She had managed to get the infrared cameras to move on the drone and had a clear view of the approaching vehicle, although she now carried her laptop on its side. “He’s going to have to take the field to the south or north! I like the north!” her voice quieted a little as she ran inside one of the cubed structures. “He’ll be coming out right out there,” she pointed from the doorway to fifty-feet north of the tracks, which ran right up to a fortified gate in the Quarantine Wall. Heavy tree branches and an assault of millions of leaves flew about in the field in violent, twisting whirlwinds, randomly obscuring their view.
“We’re safe, Hef!” Calvin told his friend. “Do what you have to do!”
“Ok! I am leaving the tracks and will try to slide through this field to the north!” Golf ball chunks of hail sent splashes like meteor strikes from standing water in the dips and valleys of the ten acre field before them.
“Wait! It’s been raining too much here!” Calvin shouted a warning. “You’ll just sink! Besides, there are trees on both sides of the road!” He crouched with the two soldiers just inside the gates of the Army compound, underneath the overhang of the tiny guard shack, view obstructed only by the rage of an approaching tornado. The track ran between two tree lines, the heavy oaks and cedars of which were currently being whipped about like the wispy branches of a willow. Behind the dancing line of trees on both sides sat a large field, the northern field leading right up to the little fort they had assembled at the base of the wall. The southern field rolled about a hundred yards past the base and right up to the Quarantine Wall.
“I see them! I can get through a few trees! Ok, I am off the tracks!” he shouted.
The tempo of the train changed in the distance. The rumble had been growing louder for a while, but they hadn’t been able to separate the sound from the thunder and roaring winds of the approaching storm. Suddenly the train busted through two trees across the open fields, heading straight for a section of downed trees, its bright LED lights shining at them from the northern tree line. Moving fast, about fifty mph, but slowing noticeably as it entered the muddy field, Calvin realized he was right; the train was just too heavy. Reaching the middle of the field, the colossal vehicle sank nearly halfway up the treads and Hef was forced to physically jockey the heavy steering handles side-to-side in an attempt to find a solid track of land to climb up out of the massive mud pit. Despite his best efforts, the train lurched to a stop sideways and tilted on its side, the cars sliding in the mud to jackknife along side the engine, nothing but thirty or forty yards of mud and flying debris between Hef and his awaiting friends.
“I cannot make it!” Hephaestus shouted over his mic, barely audible over the screaming wind and near-constant peals of thunder.
“Just get out and run, buddy!” Calvin shouted back.
“I must straighten the train if I can! Sideways it will give the citizens another barricade to hide behind!” Revving the engines repeatedly, he rocked the massive vehicle back and forth, finally breaking it free just enough to pull the engine around the other direction to straighten the train out, but sinking it to the rails on either side. Adding to the debris field of the approaching tornado, mud and grass sprayed in all directions as he used the two dozen smaller tri-treads to pull the cars back around behind the engine, leaving a much smaller profile for anyone to hide behind. Unfortunately this included himself, and he now faced the line of trees. Several bullets began plinking ineffectively off of the train engine. Gunning the engine several more times while jerking the steering handles side-to-side again, Hef tried to throw as much mud from next to the treads as he could before shutting down the powerful engines.
Trip crawled up next to Calvin, looking through his binoculars to see between fifty and a hundred people standing along the paralleling tree line nearly two football fields away. “Wow! They’re pretty tenacious to stay out here in tornado weather!” Tripper yelled over the wind. “They must want us really bad!”
The wind had picked up even more in intensity and fist-sized chunks of hail rocketed into the field, while quarter-sized ice balls hammered the vehicles within the compound. The storm reached a dangerous crescendo, everyone not within a shelter instinctively dove for cover and hung on to anything solid; Calvin, Trip and the soldiers dove for the thick steel fence; the townsfolk grabbed for trees; Lucy and the others shut the doors to their modules. A roar so loud no one bothered to speak filled the valley for several minutes, powerful winds ripped several trees in the distance from the tree line and slammed them into the nearby vehicles. Calvin, Trip and the soldiers clung to the heavy fence in desperation, unfathomable winds lifting all four into the air forcibly as the guard shack disintegrated. Just when Calvin felt he would surely lose his grip, that he couldn’t possibly hold on any longer, the storm abated and his body dropped to the ground. The wind died, the lightning and thunder moved east and the sky brightened, becoming calm once again.
“Great timing,” Calvin complained bitterly, prying his numb fingers from the links of fence. “Hef could have used the tornado as a distraction.”
“Are you
ok?” Athena called, the rest of the gang rushing from the modules behind her to check for damage to the vehicles and compound.
“Fine,” Calvin assured her. “These guys didn’t even have armor and they’re ok,” he pointed to the two officers, who despite a few cuts and bruises appeared to be fine, though both nursed bleeding fingers from clutching the chain links without chain mail gloves.
Hephaestus had, indeed, tried to use the blasting winds to cover his flight to the compound, but during the most intense moment had been forced to dive into the mud and dig out a temporary shelter, jamming both arms into the deep mud to anchor himself. Now in the middle of an open field between two armed forces, he was finally beginning to regret being so obstinate. Bullets began striking the downed trees and nearby rocks. Perhaps he should have let Calvin go after all. Calvin would have found a way out of this, already. “I do not suppose you have a way out of this for me, Calvin?” Hef asked, sounding more than a little desperate.
“We’ll just come back out there and get you, buddy,” Calvin replied, but a group of non-coms and guards that seemed to have appeared from thin air formed up along the entrance to block his path.
“No leaving the base when there are hostiles out there,” a colonel warned him, rushing up and grabbing Athena and Sarah in her firm grasp to keep them back.
“I’m not leaving my friend out there!” he stated in an unnecessarily loud voice as the storm had blown through and there was no longer a reason to shout. But he was angry. And that was always a reason to shout, if not a very good one.
“You’re under our protection now. We can’t let you go back out there yet.”
Calvin brushed past the colonel and pushed the sergeant who tried to block him out of the way with a firm thrust of both arms. When two privates tried to grab him, he clocked one on the jaw and kicked him in the groin. Then he spun, dropped six inches and put his elbow firmly into the midsection of the second and finished with a turning uppercut as he stood tall again. He felt rather than saw Tripper’s over-handed blow that sent the soldier to rest on the ground. They were going to rescue their friend and no one would stop them. Striding boldly and without fear towards the open gate, unslinging his rifle, knowing Trip had his back, and preparing to fight past the final two soldiers standing in his way, he never saw the shooter that put him face-down in a puddle, never heard the second shot that dropped Tripper heavily onto his back.
“What the hell, Dude!” Scaggs yelled from the Hedgehog, climbing into the back to man a turret, switching on the compressor.
“Hey!” Athena screamed. “We’re the good guys!”
Standing off to the other side and unseen, Lucy saw her chance to go. She turned and ran between the distracted guards into the field, nothing on her mind but helping Hephaestus. Nothing else mattered. If she could just make that boulder thirty feet away…
“Hey!” one guard shouted and fired.
With a thwack as the projectile struck her high in the back, the young exotic woman was gone before she hit the ground. Her incredible forward momentum carried her face-first several feet through the mud, burying her body slightly a crater as if she were an asteroid coming to Earth, or the starship Enterprise in nearly any of The Next Generation movies.
“I’m sorry,” the colonel apologized to the others. “We really can’t allow you to leave under the circumstances. You’re the only civilians we’re actually charged with protecting and we’re not going to let you go out into a live fire battlefield.”
“So you fucking shoot us yourselves instead?” Joel argued. “That’s pretty fucked-up logic, dude!”
“They will be alright. Those were self-contained taser rounds. After the recent massacre, all first-line troops are using only non-lethal rounds.”
“How’d you get it through their armor?” Joel asked.
“Most of the armed groups we’ve seen have been wearing Kevlar, so we’re using rounds designed to penetrate. They’ll hurt for a few days, but at least they weren’t hit by live rounds out there.”
“Big news, Colonel,” Athena argued as she ran past the officer, scooping Calvin’s limp torso into her arms and shaking him. “We just came from a live-fire battlefield. We’ve been there for almost two weeks and we got out ok.”
The colonel snapped her fingers and two soldiers ran out and dug Lucy’s limp form from the mud and carried her back into the compound, gently laying her beside Calvin and Trip. “Yes, you held out well inside there. But that was before you were under our protection. I’m sorry. I don’t like this any more than you do, but you must stay here where it is safe.”
“And you’ll keep us safe if you have to shoot us yourselves?”
“Yes.”
“Then send someone out there!” she demanded angrily.
“At this time, I do not have the authority to do that. The orders are that you have to reach this facility to be under our protection. And once inside, you are to stay under our protection until the tests are over, or you decide to leave. But we cannot enter the neutral area.”
“Then we want to leave!” she shouted.
“I was told that only Calvin Hobbes can make that decision for your group.”
“More big news, you just zapped him!” Scaggs screamed at the woman. “Hef’s almost here. He’s just thirty yards away out there!”
“Yes, in the middle of a neutral zone where either side has range with weapons.”
“So? You’re the fucking military!” Sarah shouted angrily. “Get out there and be all that you can be! Save our friend!”
“I’m sorry. I cannot,” the colonel apologized, looking truly regretful. “We will have our snipers keep them out of our side of the zone. But he must find his own way out of there. On a good note, it appears he has reached the safety of those fallen trees.”
“He won’t have that protection for very much longer,” Athena noted sourly.
Hef had tried to run, but he had taken one round in the foot and had to hobble into a stack of trees the military had clearly cut down to keep the neutral zone empty. The biggest log in the stack was being systematically ripped to pieces by excessive gunfire aimed at it. The military steadfastly refused to fire on anyone not entering the safety zone and attacking the walls. But this mob was shooting from just outside the zone. They could sit there 24 hours a day in shifts and keep him pinned behind these logs while slowly ripping the cover away. Captain Batmouche’ ran over to the gate and demanded four of the guards there take off their Kevlar.
“This is our personal gear,” one private complained.
“It’s going to save a life,” she insisted and the man conceded.
“Gimp Bait!” she shouted at Private Baldwin. “You’re with me. Do what I do and one of us might make it back alive.” She took a second look at him and added, “I’m not going to lie to you, soldier. It’s probably going to be me.” She smiled and he returned an even broader grin. Quickly fastening two vests together, she slipped her arm into the shield she’d made while the private copied her motions. Taking a deep breath, she nodded to one of the guards, who opened the gate for her to run out.
“Oh,” the colonel standing with Athena noted as an afterthought. “Well there you go,” she pointed to the captain and private rushing across the field. “Or the good Captain can still go out there. She has her own mission parameters and can do…basically whatever she wants, I suppose.”
“Woohoo! Go Buttmunch and Gimp Bait!” Scaggs shouted.
When the others looked crosswise at her, she scowled. “What? Oh my God, that’s not their real names, is it?”
She seemed absolutely serious, so someone had to answer. “It’s Batmouche’, actually,” Sergeant Doogard answered her. “It’s French. But to tell you the truth, we’ve been calling her Buttmunch ever since y’all started it.”
“Right on,” Scaggs pumped fists with him.
“But don’t get too cocky, Sergeant Dogood,” she said dryly as an aside.
His delight turned to shock as he le
arned that they had a name for him too, but he quickly shrugged it off. “I’ve been called worse,” he responded with a nod.
“Look at her go…” Athena whispered, watching as she held Calvin’s head in her lap and waited for him to return to reality.
“Oh, the captain didn’t get her rank by being a bad soldier. She’s got all the skills,” Doogard enlightened them in admiration. “Poor Gimp Bait might not make it, though…” he murmured quietly, scratching his chin before loading his rifle and taking it off safety. He walked up to the open iron gate and watched the scene unfold with the others coming over to join him. A group of soldiers stepped in front of the civilians to ensure none of them could try to repeat what Calvin and Tripper had attempted, so they were forced to watch over shoulders or between arms.
The captain was fast. Sarah had run track for most of her life and she would swear she had never seen anyone so fleet of foot, especially under fire and sinking halfway up her shins into the mud with every stride. She dashed in a straight line into the open field, bullets slapping up mud on either side as she bolted as if she herself had been fired from a rifle—a smart round, straight and true to her target. Her lead increased so far ahead of Gimp Bait the shooters weren’t paying him any attention at all, so the fear finally eased some and he was able to run faster, to close the gap a little. Ten feet, twenty, thirty, unbelievably both were still unhurt. Then one bullet struck the double Kevlar shield the captain held and everything changed.
The captain had unwittingly—or maybe not quite so unwittingly—forced the hand of the soldiers on the wall. It was one thing to let the civilians shoot each other in the Quarantine zone, because the normal rules of civilized society were temporarily suspended. Civs versus Civs wasn’t their problem at this point. It was, however, another thing entirely to let one of those civilians, or especially a hundred, shoot one of their own.