Kingdoms of Sorrow

by JK Franks

  As the men got closer he felt a tingle in his ear. Then, inexplicably, his radio earpiece began to burn his ear. He reached to jerk it out and realized that his hand was itching and hot. Looking at his hand, though, nothing seemed to be wrong with it—but there was, oh God, there was! Up and down the line he saw and heard men in agony. He looked over at the Marauder next to him. “What is it, Willy?”

  Willy didn’t speak, but Jimmy followed his eyes. The two advance scouts were no longer standing; they were on their knees. Smoke was rising from their bodies; their uniforms were beginning to smolder and catch fire.

  “WHAT IN THE FUCK IS GOING ON!” Jimmy screamed. “PULL BACK! PULL BACK!” With no working radio, he shouted at his men, who were now writhing in agony. Several of the squad began to retreat just as the very dead bodies of the front scouts boiled and ruptured in wet, red bursts.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The command trailer was underneath an overpass on I-40. Hawley’s ruthless lieutenant and several other officers had just been invited in and were waiting to speak. They didn’t look good.

  “Shit, Pete, you look like hell,” Hawley sounded as shocked as they all looked. “How close are we to their base camp?”

  Pete looked at the ground, “We aren’t sure,” he was trembling. “Best guess would be five miles, but no one’s actually seen it yet. Our guys are getting hammered, though.”

  Hawley opened his mouth to respond but could see his leader looking up at the men, so he waited his turn.

  “Where are they attacking?” Michael asked.

  Pete looked to his left, and the man standing there began to report, “Your Holiness, they are mostly ignoring the ground force near the river. The gunships are targeting and wiping out the heavier technicals, mounted guns and all our crew-manned guns. Our advance force is also encountering strong resistance. The ridgeline has heavy machine gun emplacements, bunkers with clear fire lines and, apparently, a sniper nest that we have been unable to neutralize. We are losing a lot of men.”

  Hawley was sweating; this had been mainly his battle plan, but he hadn’t been prepared for this level of resistance. Michael glared at him. He looked over at Pete before speaking. “Recommendations?”

  “The pincer movement isn’t working, sir. They’re too prepared, and we can’t match the firepower. They have a secure and entrenched location, which means we’d need overwhelming numbers in a sustained attack to defeat them. We must mobilize all guns and manpower along the most direct route. Pour everything we have into a single, rapid, frontal assault. It sounds suicidal, but it’s the only way we stand a chance.”

  Michael sprung to his feet and paced as best he could in the confined cabin. “Who in the fuck are these guys?” he spat, “Have we captured anyone? Found any markings on any of the equipment?”

  Pete cleared his throat nervously, “No idea, sir. No prisoners yet, no markings we’ve seen, other than what looked like a scorpion on the side of the Cobra copter. Everything’s in dull gray camo, none of our guys recognize it. But sir—I mean—Your Holiness. Some of the stuff they’re hitting us with is insane.”

  “Like what?” Michael asked.

  “Well, one of the advance Marauder groups was immobilized by what they said was a flat-looking radar dish. They advanced to take it out, assuming it was part of the communications array, when they started feeling like they were on fire. Their skin’s blistered, weapons got too hot to hold, the uniforms burst into flames. Said they felt like they were being cooked.”

  “Devil’s fire,” Michael said, looking erratically at the company around him as he took back up his character. He needed to be the Prophet more than ever.

  Pete reluctantly corrected his leader: “One of the surviving Marauders said it was likely a portable microwave generator. He used something similar back when he was in the Army. They had a few units, testing for crowd dispersal. Back then they didn’t do any real damage, though—just made people feel like they were getting hit by a heat cannon . . . worst they could do was cause a case of mild sunburn. Whatever this is, the wattage was turned way up. We lost 150 men from that assault, most to that weapon.”

  Hawley looked at Pete in amazement. “Who in the fuck are these people?” he demanded once more. “We’re back to living in the fucking Stone Age and these guys have fucking heat rays?” He looked around, but no one met his gaze. “We need answers. Maybe they’re Chinese—or Russian. We could be occupied by any number of foreign powers when you think about it. Who would have this kind of hardware?” He was starting to sound panicked; bewildered. “Look, we need to find out who we are up against. Find a way to capture a prisoner—alive. Bring them here to me when you do. Have all the regular troops pull back for now.

  Michael erupted in fury: “PULL BACK? Who do you think you are questioning the Lord’s will? We continue to attack, move forward. The question isn’t who are we fighting, it is what are they protecting with all this? It must be something impressive. Use the converts, make the enemy stay focused on them. God has given me a vision. He has shown me that we will enjoy a great victory in this battle. Go make it happen.”

  Twenty miles away on a nearly abandoned stretch of airstrip, a fleet of modified drones began taxiing down the runway. The fully loaded autonomous jets were the third of five waves destined to hit the attackers: their target was the Messengers’ command and control apparatus. They had identified it as a large coach style bus with numerous Humvees and armed technical trucks. The drones were all unmarked, but the AGM 114 Hellfire missiles each bore Praetor’s scorpion. The drone pilots had been talking to God, too, but they had a different message to deliver.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Southeast of Little Rock, Arkansas

  Bobby awoke to the solemn face of the young boy staring down at him. He was confused; it was now daylight outside. He went to sit up, but nausea and dizziness forced his head back down onto the wood floor. He had muddied memories of the previous night—he hoped it was just last night. His body was weak, but he recalled the talk with Jordan, and the boy. What had she called him? Jack, no something else . . . Joey . . . Jacob.

  “Jacob, my name is Bobby. I was friends with your mommy when she was about your age,” he smiled weakly. He managed to sit up again. The boy remained silent, still staring. “Is your mom around? Could you get her?” Another wave of dizziness hit, and when he was able to open his eyes again the boy was gone, and the screen door across the room was slamming shut. He heard indistinct sounds from outside; something wasn’t right, but the fuzziness in his head couldn’t process it. He saw a pitcher of water on the counter, and the cottony feeling in his mouth overrode his desire to stay seated.

  He was seated at the table and on his second glass of water when Jordan and her son walked in. “You look better, I—well, I was worried for a while. How are you feeling?”

  Bobby shook more of the cobwebs free before speaking, “Like you shot me, then ran over my body several times with a truck.”

  She felt his forehead then walked to the sink. “The fever came back. Sorry, wasn’t much I could do for you, so I let you sweat it out. This morning when you didn’t wake up I began to worry. I was beginning to wonder if you were going to sleep through the entire war.”

  “This morning . . . what time is it? Wait—” he said, finally registering what she’d said, “What war?”

  “You need to come outside. If you can, that is.”

  With considerable effort, Bobby made it out the door and down the few steps into the yard. What he saw made little sense to him. Numerous fighter jets flew silently above them, making a wide turn over the nearby hills. The sound followed several seconds later. In the far distance, he could hear the massive, concussive blast of bombing runs. Black smoke billowed on the horizon. “Who is fighting?” he wondered aloud.

  His confusion kept increasing; no one had seen jets overhead since last summer. He hadn’t seen any signs of the Army, the Air Force . . . shit, not so much as the Boy Scouts. “How long h
as this been going on?” Looking at the sun, he estimated the time at around five in the afternoon.

  “We started hearing the bombs about lunch time. Then the jets showed up a few hours ago. They’ve been steady since. The sounds were farther away earlier, but they seem to be getting louder and closer now.”

  Bobby thought for a second, “What’s in that direction?”

  “Memphis,” she said, with an edge of remorse. It had been her home once.

  “So, they started near Memphis around five hours ago, and now they’re moving this way. Whoever it is, they must be attacking the Messengers. Scott mentioned a paramilitary group, I can’t remember who, but he called them “gray shirts” or something. Maybe they have the firepower to turn the Prophet away.”

  Jacob was hiding behind his mother’s leg watching the jets, all the while keeping a wary eye on Bobby as well. Jordan spoke, “If that’s true, I hope they kill them all.”

  Bobby thought about it, then said, “I do, too, but I doubt it. Most are on foot, which makes them hard to target from the air. They had tens of thousands of followers last time I knew—they could be spread out over fifteen miles or more . . .” He thought for a moment. “The Mississippi River makes a natural border to the east, and if they’re coming this way, they’ll also have the Arkansas River blocking a westward escape. That means that even if these guys manage to wipe out most of them, we’re going to have a horde of the crazy bastards heading this way in the next few days.”

  “Shit,” she said. “We need a car.”

  The sounds of battle seemed to be quieting slightly, and the pounding in his head was also subsiding. He walked over to the creek he knew so well. The sunlight played across the ripples in a hypnotic pattern. The sound was soothing. He wanted badly to stay here. It was familiar, and it was comfortable.

  Jordan walked up behind him, “D’you think they will find us? We aren’t near anything important. Won’t they just keep running south?”

  All these questions. He didn’t have the answers, but he knew the threat. “They will find this place, yes. They are very thorough, and they will likely be very desperate. We can’t stay, and we can’t hide. I’ve seen how they work. We won’t have a chance.” Something was nagging at him, though, something his brother had said. He tried to force his mind to clear. Why did he send me to this spot anyway? It’s remote, sure, previously not in the Messengers’ path . . ..

  He looked out at the creek again. “Go with the flow.” That was what Scott had said—go with the flow. Bobby now knew what his little brother had meant.

  “Jordan, do you know if your uncle’s old kayaks or canoes are still here?”

  “Uh . . . yeah, they are . . . well, the canoe is anyway—it was up in the rafters of the barn. The kayaks, I believe they were stored under the house, but I haven’t even looked under there. Why?”

  “This creek feeds into a larger one that eventually flows into the Arkansas River. Scott, Dad, and I paddled all the way down to the big river a few times. It’s around twenty miles from here.”

  “I’ve paddled the creek some too, but tree-falls block the way now in a lot of places. It would be slow going. Besides, what do we do when we get to the Arkansas River?”

  “We go with the flow!” he almost laughed. “We can take that all the way down until it flows into the Mississippi River. Then, if we take that closer to the coast, we should be able to get pretty close to where Scott and my daughter Kaylie are.”

  “Wait, wait, wait! I’m all for getting outta Dodge, but that would have to be what—600 miles on the river? I am not an outdoors type, and I have a small boy. Those rivers are huge, with strong currents and—don’t you think other people will be on them—bad people?”

  “It’s probably closer to 700 miles, but we won’t take it all the way down, and the current will be pushing us. This stretch right here will probably be the hardest to navigate. We’ll have to be careful but staying here is suicide.”

  Jordan was unconvinced, and he didn’t blame her. He took her aside and shared with her some of the atrocities the Messengers were known for. It took fifteen minutes more, but when a large air burst bomb sounded down the valley, shaking the house and even the trees, she came around. They began pulling the dust-covered boats out. The kayaks were in good shape, but the brightly colored plastic on two of them stood out to Bobby. The canoe was solid but looked about as ancient and unsafe as could be imagined. He found some roofing tar and plugged a few obvious holes. In the meantime, Jordan and Jacob busily assembled supplies.

  Rummaging around the old barn, Bobby found several rattle cans of dark paint. He sat the kayaks up on sawhorses and began spray painting over the brightly colored plastic. He knew it would probably scratch or flake off fairly quickly, but it didn’t need to last long.

  Once finished, he pulled all the boats to the edge of the creek. Jordan and Jacob began loading the supplies they had gathered. They had the large fourteen-foot canoe and three kayaks. The supplies would ride more secure in the canoe, as would Jacob. He and Jordan would take a kayak each and tow the canoe and the extra kayak behind them. Jordan had only brought what she felt was essential, but Bobby still thought it was too much. What they lacked were bags to store many of the items. It wasn’t bad now, but the unstable gear would be very difficult to keep upright when they hit rapids or stronger currents. The problem was solved when Jordan produced a large roll of commercial plastic stretch wrap. They wrapped everything into bundles, including extra life jackets. They decided to completely wrap the canoe and the extra kayak into one large floating bundle.

  “It isn’t pretty,” Bobby said with satisfaction, “but it should work.”

  “So, how early we going to head out?” Jordan asked.

  The sun was beginning to dip lower in the sky. “How about now? We still have several hours of daylight, and I’d rather be increasing the miles between us and them right away.” The sound of small arms fire from just up the valley enforced the impending threat.

  For a moment she looked as if she was going to protest, but she nodded and said nothing. She fitted a life jacket onto Jacob and gave him his safety instructions. She pulled a lanyard at the boy's neck and said, “If you fall in the water, blow this whistle until we see you. You will be fine, okay?” He nodded, looking excited but nervous.

  They pulled the tiny flotilla into the deep part of the gentle creek and settled into their hard seats. Swiftly, they began to paddle away from the homestead. Bobby took the lead, glancing back regularly to make sure all was good. “Bro, I hope you know what you’re doing, sending us down this route . . .” he muttered to himself in a low voice.

  Jordan had been right about the number of fallen trees, and in the first five miles, they were forced to stop numerous times to pull the boats over or tuck them through the limbs and walk behind them.

  Now they faced a large, fallen poplar tree that blocked the route entirely. The tree was still thick with green leaves; a recent occurrence. The tree limbs were too thick to go over or through. He thought briefly about portaging the boats around but noticed the high banks on both sides. He had anticipated this and moved his kayak over to the shallows and hopped out. Going to the canoe, he gave Jacob a wink as he pulled out a large, curved, bladed bush-ax. While the ax was not designed to cut down trees, it was great with limbs up to a few inches thick. Bobby eyed the tree and determined the fewest limbs he would need to cut to get them through. He climbed onto the main trunk, walked out to the point he had eyed, and began chopping.

  The task was time-consuming and noisy, but it only took around thirty minutes to get enough limbs out of the way. He was now exhausted, but he climbed back into his kayak and worked the party through the hazard and into clearer waters. The next stretch was relatively clear, and they entered the larger creek just as night was beginning to fall. Traveling at night had not been in the plan, but the lingering dusk gave them ample light for quite a while longer. The creek began to widen and pick up speed.

  �
�We must be getting close to the Arkansas,” Bobby said. “Let’s pull over and find a camp spot.”

  The trio had not talked much since leaving, in fact, Jacob hadn’t spoken at all. But they were now all close to exhaustion. The sounds of battle had faded to nothing, and all that they heard now were the sounds of the river and the forest. They made a cold camp, eating leftovers and bread before rolling out bed mats and falling to sleep.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Arkansas River, Arkansas

  Waking before sunrise, Bobby nudged Jordan as he began building a small fire to make coffee and cook some breakfast. He planned for them to stay on the river all day, so they would need the calories. He also assumed that if anyone smelled the smoke, the three of them would already be gone before the source could be located.

  Forty-five minutes later they were fed, the adults’ caffeine addiction was sated and they were pulling out of the mouth of the creek and into the main river. Though less well known than its neighbor to the east, the Arkansas River system was still one of the largest in the country. If you could still call it a country, Bobby mused.

  The river, which began in the hills of Colorado, was mostly tamed by numerous dams and locks, many of which now lay between them and their destination.

  One of the first things Bobby realized they needed was a more complete map of the waterways. Thankfully, he had guessed correctly that one would be available at the first lock system they came to. Since no electricity was available, the massive river locks were inoperable. This was a challenge as the canoe, kayaks, and supplies all had to be pulled across the ground to the other side. It was still preferable to dealing with the several large reservoir dams they would also encounter along the way: the slack current in the deep lakes slowed them, and at the dams, the portage across was arduous. Often, it took most of a day just to get everything carried over to the opposite side. On the first day, they made nearly thirty-five miles. The next day they struggled to make thirty.