The tree line erupted in a burst of rainbow-sheened silver.
“Steelies!” Doc cried. “I count three of them.”
I swung the SAW around. Took aim at the leader. Focused on the creature’s black, soulless eyes through the targeting scope.
Didn’t have much ammo. Had to make the rounds count.
The steelies out here resemble big predatory cats, like jaguars. Jaguars draped in silver-plated chain mail. I’d seen steelies that burrowed, that flew, even a thirty-foot monstrosity that looked like the bastard love-child of a Great White shark and a Sherman tank. All part of the alien ecosystem that now lay claim to the planet. Our planet.
And they all liked the taste of flesh.
I squeezed the trigger. The SAW thundered in my ear.
My bullets hit home. Pings and flashes as high-velocity slugs bounced off the sharkskin hide. The creature staggered, but kept coming.
Steelies had flesh-soft patches at the throat, the groin, and the eyes. Otherwise, they had the hide of a battleship and the constitution of a vending machine.
And, dear God in heaven, they were fast.
Even with the supercharger, these three ate up the stretch of asphalt between us like a starving man wolfin’ down a foot-long Slim Jim. I watched them grow bigger in the scope. My guts twisted, made me clamp down on the rising fear. Squinted down the barrel of my gun and squeezed off another burst.
The lead steelie’s head exploded in a gout of red.
Dull pop of a firecracker stuffed inside an overripe watermelon. The thing dropped like a wet sack. The remaining two let out a feral snarl and drew closer, their pistoning legs smears of motion against the dark asphalt.
I cut loose with the SAW. Swiveled the gun back and forth on its mount. Did my best to knock them back before either one could leap on us.
“Manned gate up ahead!” Church called.
“Gate?” I shouted back, “What damned gate? There’s no one out here–”
I looked over my shoulder. Ate my words. Just up a long, bare slope lay a sight for road-weary eyes.
A settlement.
Not just a ragged encampment of tin-roofed shacks, or a refugee shantytown. An honest-to-god settlement, with an armed perimeter made up of all sorts of RVs and motor homes. Just behind, plowed fields of green. And a contraption that looked like one of the upright mixers of a four-story tall eggbeater.
On the hill just beyond that, a sprawling concrete-and-steel shell of a building, half warehouse, half airplane hangar. In one corner hung a faded red sign: Big Box Mart.
Armed men sat atop the perimeter, hunting rifles and shotguns at the ready. Others hustled to push aside one of the Winnebagos. Opening the ‘gate’ so that we could slip through.
I needed to make the call, right pronto.
Chapter Two
“Head for that gate, Church!”
The supercharger howled as we blasted through the gate. A hail of gunfire from the perimeter guards passed by overhead as the steelies refused to give up the chase. The whine of the engine downshifted as Church tried to wrestle the Humvee to a stop. The air filled with the rubbery, eye-watering stench of burning brake pads.
“Right turn, Church!” Doc yelled. “No, your other right!”
I ducked as one of the blades of the upright eggbeater-thing swung by overhead. All of a sudden it clicked in my fool head: this was some kind of windmill. A set of well-oiled gears at the phone-booth sized base of the windmill creaked and vibrated, gave the Teflon plate in my kneecap a twinge.
The Humvee waggled side-to-side like a drunk looking for a lamp post to lean on. I wrenched the SAW around. Spotted the two steelies just behind us, ready to pounce and tear us to shreds. But at the last moment, the aliens stumbled. Their black eyes winked slate-gray.
I fired the last of my remaining rounds. Caught one of the steelies in its tender belly, shredding it and leaving it in the soft dirt.
That same dirt finally gave way under our tires. The Humvee went into a spin. I held tight to the SAW’s mount as we smacked into the base of the windmill. The contraption made a sad metallic cough and then stopped moving.
A growl straight off the African savanna came from the remaining steelie as it began to climb up the rear of the Humvee. It hissed. Hateful, snakelike. Stink of rotting meat on its breath.
The passenger door swung open. Doc stepped out. Grease-quick, he aimed the barrel of his shotgun at the underside of the creature’s neck.
With a bang! the trigger pull knocked Doc on his ass.
The steelie flipped backwards, dark ichor gushing. Landed ten feet away. It twitched once, then lay still.
Shaking, I slid down through the roof hatch. Church and I got over to Doc at the same time. He coughed, sat up, and shrugged us off.
“I lacked time to brace myself properly,” he said. “But I’m fine.”
“Hope we stay that way,” Church said, looking over his shoulder.
I turned and stood up. The guards from the perimeter surrounded us, guns at the ready. A beefy lumberjack of a guy with muttonchops the color of rusty steel wool swaggered towards us. A well-chewed toothpick perched between tobacco-stained teeth.
He shoved a pistol in my face.
“Git your dang fool hands up,” he snarled.
Slowly, I did just that.
“You planning on killin’ us?” I asked.
“Well now, that ain’t my call,” he said. “That’s up to Keys. If Keys wants you dead, then you boys are gunna be feedin’ the worms tonight.”
Muttonchop’s men got us to our feet, then took our weapons and gear. I took a gander at the open courtyard that surrounded the building as they herded us towards the cavernous open door of the Big Box Mart. A web of PVC pipes, garden hoses, and sprinkler heads had been duct-taped or glued together to make a watering system.
I stared at rows of freshly growing broccoli, wax beans, tomatoes, turnips, and bell peppers. Women and children toiled at planting seedlings or picking vegetables. And they looked happy as they did so.
“Praise be,” Doc murmured. “I haven’t seen people cultivating food crops since…God! Since Day Zero.”
“Question is, how?” I replied, equally quiet. “The steelies should’ve swarmed this place. So many people out here, so exposed…”
“Well, don’t that beat all,” Church added, pointing at one rectangular section by the Box Mart door. An area the size of a football field had been cordoned off to grow a lawn of Kentucky bluegrass. “You figure they play football here? Out in the open, like?”
“Shut yer traps,” growled Muttonchop, as he led the way inside the building proper.
It took a moment for our eyes to adjust to the dimness. When they did, it was quite a sight. The floor space had been cleared to form a little village, with RVs filling in for cottages.
Everyone wore clothing styled from the last year before Day Zero. Jeans with retro button flies. Sneakers with pink or blue Day-Glo stripes. Tacky t-shirts done up with those dumb expressions we all used to find so gosh-darned funny. Got Beer? Got Jesus? I See Drunk People. Save a Tree, Eat More Beaver.
I spotted a few cooking fires, but most people were using electric grills to make their food. Before Day Zero, I’d have asked if the Salvation Army had gone and had themselves a rummage sale. But now? I’d seen people scratching out an existence from a lot less.
This looked like Eden.
We got marched up to a double-wide Riata Coach. By the door, a figure reclined in a lawn chair, draped in a blanket sportin’ a picture of the Budweiser Clydesdales. A wide-brimmed cowboy hat sloped low, obscuring their face. A tray holding two cans of beer and a pair of plates lay on a card table in front of the chair. My mouth watered like Niagara Falls as I saw what the plates held.
Slices of toasted Wonder bread. Pepper jack cheese. And a charred slab of freshly grilled Spam.
“Keys, we got trespassers,” Muttonchop announced. His beady eyes bored into mine. “Well, go on and identify yourselves
.”
So I spoke up. Hell, I figured it couldn’t hurt none to try and sound friendly.
“I’m Lieutenant MacWilliams, of the 189th Infantry. Fort Bragg, North Carolina.” I nodded at my companions on either side. “This here is Private Churchill Graves, and Doc – I mean, Professor Irwin Norbett.”
“Didn’t catch your first name, Army boy,” Muttonchop sneered.
I gave him a look fit to clog an oil pump. “That’s ’cause I don’t throw it out to any two-bit hayseed who’s gotten too big for his britches.”
That got him going. He bristled up and cracked his knuckles.
“You best give me your dog tag. ’Cause if you don’t, I’m gonna read it, then make you eat it.”
“Come on, then.” I widened my stance and curled up a fist. He was linebacker-big, but then so am I. And a plumb sight meaner, to boot. “I ain’t never been afraid of someone who grew up sneakin’ dessert from the bait bucket.”
(…continued...)
To read the rest of
Strangelets with a
Side of Grilled Spam:
Season One
please visit your favorite
online bookseller.
Other Works from Michael Angel:
The Strangelets with a Side of Grilled Spam Series:
Episodes One, Two,
Three, and Four.
The Fringe Space Series:
A Shovelful of Stars
Pay To Pray
Dogfight
A Planet Torn
The ‘Fantasy and Forensics’ Series
Centaur of the Crime
The Deer Prince’s Murder
Grand Theft Griffin (Coming 2015)
Other Fantasy and Sci-Fi Novels
The Detective & The Unicorn
The Wizard, The Warlord, and The Hidden Woman
The Adventures of Amanda Love
Strangelets with a Side of Grilled Spam: Season One
Treasure of the Silver Star
Treasure of the Silver Star Page 18