Against the Fading of the Light (Action of Purpose, 3)

by Stu Jones

  A long moment passed as the three Comanche warriors held their positions. Aside Neraquassi, the two mounted warriors, with their short bows, arrows notched and half-drawn, stood ready to strike. The wounded warrior groaned something unintelligible and continued to stumble toward them. They could just barely see the broken, jagged edges of three wooden stakes jutting from his impaled chest.

  “It’s a trap…” the warrior managed as he flopped against the dusty turf and became still. The others refused to move, expecting an ambush at any moment. But nothing came, the wind twisting miniature cyclones in the dust at their feet.

  “He’s—”

  “Dead,” Neraquassi confirmed. “This Tynuk must have used a bush or root with a trip wire to deliver the stakes.”

  The two mounted warriors glanced warily at each other.

  “Don’t lose your nerve. The child is on foot and still outnumbered. You two,” Neraquassi said, pointing sharply at the two mounted warriors, “flank the base of the hill, and be prepared to engage the boy from horseback with your bows. I will go on foot toward the summit. Remember, though he is a boy, he has been lucky enough to kill many of our warriors. Do not underestimate him, and do not hesitate if you have a chance to kill him.”

  The mounted warriors grunted an acknowledgment as they spurred their horses onward toward the base of the slope. Neraquassi took up his spear and made for the faint game trail that wound its way up the side of the dusty hill. He moved with slow precision, each step carefully placed, his eyes scanning the plateau above for any signs of the dangerous warrior boy.

  As their convoy of battered vehicles made its way up the lonely dust-and debris-swept New Mexico State Highway 550, Kane brought the vehicle to a sudden stop. Behind him, the others’ vehicles veered slightly left and right to avoid collision.

  “Whoa.” Ari placed her hands on the dash.

  “What is it?” Kane’s radio crackled. It was Dagen’s voice.

  “Stand by,” Kane replied into the radio as he continued to stare straight forward, watching the hazy formation of dust rising from the highway along the horizon before them. Something large was moving, and it was moving in their direction.

  “Somebody’s coming,” Kane said calmly into the radio. He scanned the roadway and the mountains beyond the highway, looming murkily in the distance. There was nowhere for them to divert, flee, or hide. They would have to confront whomever or whatever was coming toward them.

  “Call it, Kane.” Courtland’s voice popped over the radio.

  Kane glanced at Ari sitting next to him as she did a quick function check of her rifle and stuffed an extra magazine in her left cargo pocket. She did not return his glance or say a word, her face now covered in an utterly serious, warlike expression.

  “OK, here’s how we’re going to play this. We don’t want to unnecessarily provoke a confrontation with whomever this happens to be— friend or foe. If we stay here blocking the road, then that’s exactly what’s going to happen. We’ll pull our vehicles down to the left and as far from the road as as we safely can. Keep them in formation. When you exit, arm yourself and take cover behind your vehicle, facing the road. We will give whomever this is as wide a berth as possible, and we will let them pass, if they so choose. If they stop to offer anything but peace, or engage us directly, we must be prepared to fight to the death.”

  Kane paused and could sense Ari nodding in his periphery. He keyed the radio again. “Look, we don’t want this fight, but we will fight it if we have to. Minus the kids, we have almost thirty shooters, which isn’t anything to scoff at. Let’s hope these folks don’t want a fight today, and hopefully we’ll be on our way soon. If there are no objections, everyone acknowledge.”

  The voices came in quick succession.

  “Got it.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Dagen and Courtland—copy.”

  Kane listened as someone from each vehicle acknowledged the plan. “Alright, everybody on me.” He set the radio down and pulled his vehicle as far as he could off the road—approximately fifty feet. The others behind him followed suit and set their vehicles and themselves according to plan.

  Then, crouching behind their vehicles, with the children hiding between them and behind the engine blocks of the vehicles, they waited.

  As the dust rising from the road drew closer, Courtland turned toward Kane. “What if they think we’re lying in ambush?”

  Kane hadn’t considered this. “Everybody,” he called out, “lower your weapons and keep your heads low. We want to appear as non-threatening as possible.”

  Everyone murmured their consent. All eyes watched the dust cloud, which was now clearly a slow-moving convoy of large vehicles, as it drew closer.

  A few people shuffled nervously, the children huddling tightly in groups like squirming piles of kittens.

  “They’re huge, whatever they are,” Kane whispered.

  Ari spoke up. “Looks like military.”

  “Or militia,” Dagen added. “Whoever they are, they’re serious, rolling in MRAPs and Humvees like this.”

  A hundred yards back from their vehicles, the convoy stopped, clearly having seen them. A moment passed and then another, as the convoy apparently assessed the situation and the threat Kane’s group posed. Kane watched as manned turrets, one at the top of each vehicle, swiveled toward them. The barrels of the mounted M2A1 .50-caliber heavy machine guns looked like stovepipes as they pivoted in their direction.

  Kane felt a cold chill descend upon him. If these weren’t friendlies, this wouldn’t be a fight. It would be a massacre.

  “Everyone, set your weapons down. We couldn’t fight this if we wanted to.” Kane laid his pistol down on the ground. The others followed his lead, some reluctantly.

  “Stand and raise your hands—kids too,” Kane said.

  Again his group followed suit, standing with their hands in the air, some of the children’s hands rising alone above the hoods of the vehicles—tiny, bodiless, faceless hands and arms floating in the air, strangely dismembered from their little hosts.

  After a bloated pause, the convoy rumbled with a groan and closed the gap between the two groups, all the while training their overwhelming firepower on the small group of survivors. Pulling parallel, the convoy stopped once again, the sounds of the huge, rumbling engines like an animalistic cadence. To Kane and the others, the wait felt like an eternity.

  “This is the United States Army National Guard!” a voice rang out. “Do as you are told, and you will not be shot!”

  Kane couldn’t contain his relief as he smiled and pushed his hands high in the air. “Guys, I think we just found a unicorn.”

  17

  IN THE DARKNESS of the closet, Nick Corvaleski sat hunched, waiting. Beyond the dark safety of the closet, beyond the dark office of some long-dead administrator in which the closet resided, people were running everywhere, searching for something, maybe him. He pinched his eyes against the thought and found the inky black no different from that of his surroundings.

  What had these people come for? To the outside world, the Glen Canyon Dam was just that. Nobody without top-secret military-level clearance knew that this place was used for anything other than the standard processes of a hydroelectric dam.

  The psychotic whoops and screams echoed distant and forlorn within the concrete bowels of the dam. These people had used massive amounts of force to gain entry into a facility that Nick had previously believed impenetrable. They weren’t here to make friends.

  Suddenly he wanted to be anywhere but here. He was trapped like a hunted animal—pinned into the corner of his own choosing. There was no longer any escape for him. They would find him sooner or later, and then, he would be at their mercy. All he could do now was sit and wait.

  The men could feel it. With every passing hour, Malak was losing control of himself, and whatever it was that gave him his monstrous power was taking control. The Coyotes avoided him, fearing their own death and dismemberment as the
focus of his unbridled rage. He’d spent the last half day madly huffing his way through each room on each floor of the dam facility, tearing doors from their hinges and destroying anything that got in his way as he searched for the device he claimed was hidden here, somewhere.

  “It should be here! Where is it? Why would they keep it here? There is nowhere here to store something so ancient, so perfect.”

  Saxon stood back with his arms crossed as he watched the massive warlord pacing and speaking to himself. He knew better than to interrupt.

  “It won’t show itself to me now, but it will. It will, when it is ready.” He laughed strangely like a deranged man.

  There was a shuffling of feet at the door behind him as a thug dragged up Michael and Rachael Lorusso. With eyes cast down, their filthy, torn clothes and dirty faces masked the innocence of their youth. Fraternal twins, Kane’s children, they couldn’t be more than five years old. Together, in unison, they whispered the Lord’s Prayer.

  “What do you want?” Saxon looked to the thug pulling them along.

  “Lord Malak said to secure them.”

  “Then what the hell are you doing here, ass clown? Go secure them!”

  “Yeah, OK,” the thug mumbled.

  “Stop,” Malak said from behind them. The men turned. The children continued to pray.

  “Stop!” Malak clenched his teeth.

  “What?” Saxon seemed bewildered.

  “Stop saying that!” Malak put his hands over his ears.

  Saxon and the goon looked at the children, who squeezed their little eyes shut but continued to pray. The thug covered their mouths, but the muffled words were still audible.

  Without warning, Malak whirled and flung himself toward them. Saxon fell away in fear, the thug desperately trying to muffle the children’s prayers.

  “Stop it!” Malak shrieked, the darkness physically oozing from his body and drifting from his lifeless black eyes. He stopped short, seeming to swell in size before the children. Overcome with fear, the thug now shrank back, but the children continued their cadence.

  “Look at me,” Malak snarled at the children, but they refused. “Look at me. Look at me. Look! At! Me!”

  The children stopped, their eyes opening slowly to look at the massive, demonic man, his appearance far more like the boogeyman’s than any child’s mind could ever attempt to conjure. They stood there looking as Malak continued to distort and swell, wickedly.

  “Do I frighten you?” the demonic warlord whispered in a voice that was not wholly his own. Something else was speaking through him. “Do you fear the darkness that you behold? Will you look on in terror when I bathe in your little souls?”

  Unflinching, Michael began to sing, “Our God is greater. Our God is stronger. God, you are higher than any other…”

  Malak gasped and shook his head wildly as though he’d just stuck it inside a hornet’s nest.

  “Jesus won’t save you now! Jesus is dead! Your mommy and daddy are dead! You belong to me! You are mine now!”

  Michael pinched his eyes and continued to sing, with Rachael joining in. Malak huffed and grabbed his head as the children’s words slipped into his ears like the blade of a knife, cutting, cutting…

  With a roar Malak lunged forward as the terrifying demonic presence poured from his features. He raised his fist to obliterate the tiny voices. To make the singing stop—

  Destroy them, and the plan is ruined. Get them away from us.

  “Make them stop!” Malak screamed.

  “We can’t, Lord; that’s the problem.”

  “Get them away from me, and make them stop, now! Beat it out of them!”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  As the singing continued, Malak whirled in a frenzied panic and grabbed the closest thug, squeezing him by the neck and shoving him back. “Stop fucking around, and get them away from me!”

  Shuffling chaotically, the thug forcefully grabbed the children and fled, pulling them down the hallway as they sang, louder and louder. Saxon looked on in absolute bewilderment.

  “I will drink of them soon enough. Yes, soon enough,” Malak chanted. After a time, Malak seemed to shrink, his demeanor calming. Saxon slipped silently away from the mad titan and left him to his mutterings and ramblings.

  “Childish songs cannot stop me.” He clenched his fists. “I will find the Machine. I will find it. It’s here. I can feel it. Nothing will keep it from me.”

  Kane sat on the ground next to Jenna and Courtland, their hands behind their backs in flex-cuffs. Around them, Army National Guard soldiers in ACU digital BDUs stood guard, watching them warily, their weapons at the ready.

  “What is so funny?” Jenna whispered to Kane, who had a wry smile plastered across his face.

  “I just can’t believe our luck,” Kane said from the corner of his mouth. “Well, that…that and the fact that they tried to put Courtland in flex-cuffs.”

  Courtland turned his head and smiled. “It’s not luck.”

  They had tried but had not been successful in finding restraints that fit the giant. The giant now sat peacefully with his hands in his lap and with four soldiers and their issued M16 rifles trained on him.

  “Stop talking,” one of the soldiers said shortly.

  Kane bobbed his head, and they all sat quietly as several men who looked to be in charge appeared to talk about what to do with them.

  After a moment, one soldier with a lean, muscled appearance and an angular jaw approached. The sharp-featured man was flanked by two solidly built men who were unquestionably part of the operational leadership of this outfit. He eyed the group for what felt like eternity before he spoke.

  “I am Second Lieutenant Ryback with the United States Army National Guard, Eight Hundred Fifty-Sixth Military Police Company. I need to speak with whoever is in charge.” He looked the group over appraisingly.

  There was some shuffling, and all eyes shifted toward Kane.

  Kane spoke up. “I’ll speak for the group.”

  The lieutenant turned his attention to Kane and paused. “Very well. Stand him up,” Ryback said to his men, who stood Kane up and walked him away from the group. Upon stepping away from the others, the lieutenant stopped and turned toward Kane. “What’s your name?”

  “Kane Lorusso.”

  “Are you bandits? Was this an ambush you set up here?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “We saw your vehicles coming. Call me gun-shy, but we’ve been through the ringer. We were on the road and had nowhere to hide, so we took up defensive positions instead. Just being prepared for the worst.”

  The lieutenant considered this and looked Kane over appraisingly. “Are you active or a vet?” Ryback’s question came directly.

  Kane shook his head. “Neither, sir. Law enforcement.”

  Ryback nodded, seeming to have arrived at some sort of a decision. “We’ve taken up all your weapons. When I remove your restraints, you’ll remain calm, or you’ll be shot—your people too. Is that understood?”

  Kane nodded. Ryback’s men clipped his flex-cuffs away.

  “We may be on home soil, but we can’t take any chances these days.”

  “I understand,” Kane said, rubbing his wrists.

  Ryback turned to another man, heavily built with a commanding presence. “Take care of the men, Sergeant. I’ll handle Mr. Lorusso.”

  “Yes, sir.” The platoon sergeant turned and immediately began belting commands to the men. “Alright, people, I want a close perimeter up with loose inner security for our guests. Check your weapons and ammo and drink water. We won’t be staying long.”

  As the platoon sergeant stepped away, Lieutenant Ryback turned his attention back to Kane. “In a moment, we will be on our way, and we’ll leave you and your people to whatever it was you were doing.”

  “Lieutenant,” Kane replied, “I have a lot of questions.”

  The second lieutenant looked sternly at Kane, his gaze clearly indicati
ng that he was unsure if he wanted to answer any questions. “Go ahead.”

  “In over a year, I haven’t seen anything like this—nothing to indicate that anything resembling formal government or military entities still existed. I was just resigned to the fact that they didn’t anymore, which is why a military convoy was the last thing I expected to see.”

  The lieutenant continued to gaze coolly.

  “Is there anything you can tell me?”

  After a long pause, Ryback gave a small inclination of his head. “Since you technically don’t have a ‘need to know,’ I’ll have to keep things general. On the other hand, after all this country’s been through, I think its people have a right to know something.”

  Kane nodded.

  The lieutenant continued, “I’m sure there are other military enclaves still out there, but we haven’t had any contact with anyone since this mess began. Second Platoon is all that’s left of the Eight Hundred Fifty-Sixth. We’ve waited here long enough. We’re headed to Washington, DC, to see what we can do.”

  Kane shook his head. “DC is a glass crater. It took a direct hit.”

  Ryback nodded. “I heard, but we still have to go. There’s nothing left for us here.”

  “We sure could use your help.”

  “I wish we could, Mr. Lorusso, but I don’t have the resources or people to spare to protect you. Unfortunately, for now, you’ll just have to do like everyone else out there and find a good defensible location you can hole up in till this all blows over and the United States reestablishes itself.”

  Kane hung his head. “I wish it were that easy. How much have you seen?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How much out there have you seen? We just traveled from the East Coast, and it’s a wasteland—from Miami to New York. The cities we’ve circumnavigated on our way west haven’t fared much better. How much have you seen of it?”

  The look on the lieutenant’s face was his answer.

  “This is the first time you’ve left your base, isn’t it?” Kane sighed.

  “Our last orders were to hold our position. The base was strategic. But yes, you are correct. We’ve regularly sent scouting parties out in the area, but this is the first time we’ve actually left to go somewhere else.”