One Man Falls

by Mark R. Healy

  One Man Falls

  Mark R. Healy

  Future House Publishing

  One Man Falls

  Future House Publishing

  Cover image copyright: Shutterstock.com. Used under license.

  Text © 2016 Mark R. Healy

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Future House Publishing at rights@futurehousepublishing.com.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover image adaptation by Jeff Harvey

  Interior design by Emma Hoggan

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  It had been a long time since Jahni had seen the shimmering glow of dropships in the sunset. As she shielded her eyes against the glare and squinted into the deep orange haze, she counted three streaks of gold, like falling stars. Then four. Then another.

  Her heart began to hammer in her chest, and a feeling of profound dread clutched at her, flowing down her legs and into her feet, rooting her to the spot.

  This is a big one. Maybe the biggest yet.

  Jahni turned and yanked the control rotor on the harvest drone, causing the machine to splutter once and fall quiet. Shaking off her stupor, she got her legs moving, then swung herself out of the driver’s seat. She dropped to the ground and snatched her backpack from where it hung on the assembly guard and lifted it over her shoulder.

  She hadn’t taken two steps across the field before she heard the sirens.

  She hated the sound of those things more than anything else in the world. Reminiscent of old wartime air-raid sirens, they were not only the harbingers of disaster heralding the arrival of the Argoni—those monsters from the sky—but they were also stark reminders of the day her parents had died. That day three years ago, the sirens had wailed for hours, from before dawn until after sunset that night. They had wailed as Jahni sat huddled in the shelter waiting for her parents to arrive, and they still wailed when the news came that both of them were dead. That forlorn, lonely sound had stayed with her as she’d wept with her three younger siblings cradled in her arms. She’d told them that everything would be okay, even though she couldn’t bring herself to believe her own words.

  As Jahni stumbled across the field, her mind raced as she imagined where her younger brothers and sister could be. They had to get to the shelter before the secondary impacts came, or they’d all be sitting ducks out in the rolling fields of the agricultural district.

  Think, Jahni. Think!

  Carolyne was probably in the farmhouse preparing dinner. Lukas would be in the workshop wiping down the soil droids. Maybe. And Stanny . . . well, he could be anywhere, as six-year-olds often were.

  Papa Jack will round them up. He’ll know what to do.

  Papa Jack, her grandfather, had been a godsend over the past three years after her parents had been taken. Only thirteen years old at the time, Jahni had been too young to take care of the others herself. At first, she’d struggled just looking after her own affairs with all the extra work she’d taken on around the farm, let alone caring for the others as well. When Papa Jack had moved in, he’d been such a comforting, reassuring presence to all of them. Having worked the land all of his life, he knew about running the property, and his nightly stories around the campfire had become a thing of legend. Children from all around the district came to hear him talk, and it wasn’t unusual to see a crowd of twenty or thirty gathered some evenings.

  Papa Jack had brought with him a sense of comfort, of normality. Both qualities were almost a necessity during the harshness and unpredictability of the Argoni war.

  As Jahni rounded the gum tree on the edge of the rise, she saw the farmhouse in the long shadows of twilight further down the hill. Papa Jack’s weathered, red pickup was there, and she could see her grandfather setting up the comms unit in the back. She stumbled over an outcropping of rock on the slope. As she got up, she couldn’t help but look at the sky again.

  The dropships had become brighter, streaks of gold in the darkening roof of the world In their midst, she could see something else—a murky green mass that seemed to writhe and twist with indescribable malevolence.

  The Argoni spore cluster.

  The United Earth Marine dropships had responded quickly to the threat, it seemed, setting a course for the calculated impact point of the spore cluster. However, the alien spore clusters always arrived first, plummeting from the sky at almost the speed of a meteor. There would be a gap of at least several minutes between the arrival of the Argoni and the Marines.

  The civilians had to find shelter before that happened, or they would find themselves on their own, trying to stave off the monsters from the sky. The people who lived here were people of the land, not warriors.

  Jahni neared the farmhouse, and as Papa Jack caught sight of her, he shouted.

  “Stanny!” he called, pointing to the south. “He’s at the well!”

  “I’m on it! What about the others?”

  “I’ve got them.” He glanced at the sky. “What’s our ETA for the shelter?”

  Jahni fought to calm her nerves and think rationally. He was testing her. Papa Jack knew the ETA all too well, but for the past three years, he’d been schooling her on the correct procedures to follow in the event of an attack. He’d been over the details on numerous occasions—reiterating time limits down to the second—and this time he was probing her knowledge under the stress of a real attack.

  “Seven minutes,” she called as she ran past. He nodded curtly, satisfied, then turned away.

  Gasping for air, Jahni kept running past the workshop toward the well. She could hear the terrifying noises from the sky—the dull roar of the dropships, and the high-pitched, squealing warble of the Argoni spore cluster as it streaked toward the ground.

  How long had it been since the last Toad attack here? Eight months? A year? In the back of her mind, Jahni had dared to hope that the propaganda was true, that perhaps the aliens were being driven back, and that Earth was becoming a safer place, just as it had been before the war.

  But maybe that wasn’t the case after all.

  She rounded the disused, rusted skeleton of the combine harvester in the south yard and almost collided with Stanny, who had been running full pelt the other way. The boy fell into her arms, sobbing and scared out of his wits, clawing at her as if she were a lifeboat in the middle of a tumultuous ocean.

  “Jahni, they’re coming!” he cried. “They’re coming!”

  “It’s okay, I’ve got you,” she said, embracing him tightly. He was shaking like a leaf. “We’re going to make it to the shelter. We’ll be all right.”

  “We don’t have time,” he said, looking up into the sky with eyes wide and teary. “I can see them coming–”

  “Papa Jack is the Warden for the whole district, remember? We
’re safe with him. Come on.”

  “What about Pickles? I need to find him.”

  “We don’t have time for the cat, or any other animals,” she said, dragging the boy with her.

  “But he’s our best cat ever.”

  “Stanny, come on.”

  Back by the farmhouse, Papa Jack was in the process of bundling Carolyne and Lukas into the pickup. The two of them watched from inside the truck with eyes like saucers as Jahni and Stanny approached.

  “You don’t need blankets or food, Terry,” Papa Jack was saying, an omni-device pressed to his ear as he spoke. Jahni guessed he was talking to Mr. Rainbird from the property to the northwest. “I told you that before.” Papa Jack stepped up into the flatbed on the back of the pickup and returned his attention to the comms unit. His white hair looked almost luminous in the fading light. “The shelter is fully stocked. I ran an inventory myself three weeks ago.”

  “You two okay?” Jahni asked Lukas and Carolyne as she guided Stanny inside the pickup. They nodded worriedly, tension written across their faces. Looking at each of them in turn, Jahni could see they were going through the same emotions she was. Carolyne was eleven, and Lukas ten. Both were old enough to remember the attack that had taken their parents’ lives.

  “I… I brought a scope,” Lukas said, holding a pair of magnification glasses up for her to see. He was a dark-haired boy with a smattering of freckles on his cheeks. “I didn’t take long to get it. Honest.”

  “Give them here,” Jahni said, not unkindly, and the boy handed them over. “You did good.” She slipped them around her neck and turned her head to check on Papa Jack, who was still finishing his preparations in the back of the truck.

  “I came straight out,” Carolyne said. “Just like we’ve been told.” Her pale cheeks were flushed, her hair was drawn back from her face, and there was a smudge of flour on her left eyebrow. Jahni reached up to brush it away.

  “You both did the right thing. I’m proud of you.” She moved around the back and got up beside her grandfather next to the comms unit, which consisted of an antenna and a pair of consoles at its base that were fixed to the flatbed. Its purpose was to form a communications grid with both the UEM and the other civilians in the area. Jahni nudged Papa Jack over to the other side of the comms console and began to type. “How many more to go on this one?” she asked him.

  “Three,” he said. He began to tap on the console next to her, the omni-device still pressed to his ear. “I’ll finish the last ones here.” He glanced at her. “You remember the procedure?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got it,” she said. “Make sure the handshaking protocol goes through and then acknowledge the responses. The comms grid helps to identify early hotspots,” she recited.

  Her grandfather nodded distractedly as a voice crackled through the omni-device. “Don’t wait for that, Terry,” he barked in response. Although he was getting on in years, Papa Jack’s voice was still as hard as nails. “Get your comms link up and then get your people to the shelter. Put six feet of steel between you and the Toads. That’s the best thing for it.” He uttered a brief farewell and then hung up the omni-device. He snapped his side of the console shut. “You done?”

  “Done.”

  “Then let’s hoof it.”

  Jahni hopped over the side of the pickup and slipped in beside her siblings in the cab. Papa Jack appeared at the driver’s side door and swung himself behind the wheel, slamming the door behind him.

  Above them, a huge and grotesque orb that was the spore cluster pulsated and dominated the sky above the valley. “It’s coming in fast,” Jahni said, dismayed.

  “Not too fast for Papa Jack,” the old man said, gunning the engine. He hit the gas and the wheels spun gravel as they rocketed forward. “I ever tell you nippers about the time I raced against a quad-drone in this pickup and won?”

  “Was that the time you got hit by lightning?” Lukas said.

  “No, that was the other time,” Papa Jack said as they shot through the gate at the head of the property. “You’re thinking of the time I stowed away with a midget on a ship to the Bahamas. Boy, was that a mistake.”

  Papa Jack glanced across at Jahni and gave her a surreptitious wink, and she couldn’t help but smile despite the dire circumstances. Her grandfather was in his element now. He always showed such calmness in times of trouble, and his composure invariably rubbed off on those around him. He was a rock, a safe haven. He was the perfect man to be around at a time such as this and the kind of person every family or community needed in a crisis.

  Jahni glanced out the window as they hit the top of the next rise. The normally sleepy farming community had come to life. Vehicle headlights had begun to ignite all over the landscape, and trails of dust drifted into the air as folk burned across dirt roads toward shelters.

  “Time?” Papa Jack said without taking his eyes from the road.

  Jahni checked her wristwatch. “Five minutes.”

  “Cooking with gas!” Papa Jack exclaimed as they took a hard left. “Right on schedule.”

  There was a flash in the sky, and a few seconds later they heard a loud booming sound that made the windows on the pickup rattle.

  “It’s through atmo,” Jahni said before Papa Jack could prompt her.

  “Looks like the primary impact point is going to be somewhere over past the Wheeler place,” Papa Jack said. “That’s two, maybe three clicks from here.” He glanced across at Jahni. “So what does that mean for us?”

  Yet another test. Jahni thought carefully.

  “Secondary impacts can range up to five kilometres,” Jahni said. “That means we’re well within range of secondary impact spores.”

  “Very good,” Papa Jack said. “What else?”

  “It means we have less time to get inside the shelter.”

  “Are they going to get us?” Stanny said, terrified.

  “Nope,” Papa Jack said. “It just means that there’ll be more Toads for Papa Jack’s barbecue tomorrow tonight.”

  “Papa Jack, that’s gross,” Carolyne said, squirming in her seat. “You don’t eat Toads.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Papa Jack said, feigning indignation. “Put ‘em on a spit with some chili sauce and they practically melt in your mouth.”

  “Why doesn’t someone shoot the spaceship?” Stanny said, still staring skyward.

  “You can’t do that, Stanny,” Jahni told him, and Papa Jack nodded approvingly. “If the spore cluster blows up in the sky, the Toads usually don’t die, and they get spread out across a wider area. The best chance is always to let the spore hit the ground first, then try to contain and destroy from…”

  A loud roaring sound drowned out her voice as the spore cluster seared toward the ground, and it flared one last time before striking earth on the far side of a nearby hill. The five of them held their breath, and seconds later, the sound of the impact reached them, a deafening clamour that caused a shockwave so great that the stalks of corn in an adjacent field rippled.

  “There she blows!” Papa Jack exclaimed, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Primary impact,” Jahni said, recalling the timeframes again in her mind. “That means there’s somewhere between three and five minutes until secondaries begin–”

  Sparks of glittering light suddenly shot into the air from the far side of the hill, and another boom resonated through the air. Jahni watched in horror as dark, round objects tumbled through the sky and began to thud into the fields around them.

  “What?” she breathed, still in shock. “That’s not possible…”

  Papa Jack already had the omni-device cradled against his ear again. “Yeah, Terry? It’s already gone secondary. Spores are in the air.” He paused. “I know they’re not supposed to do that so quickly, but they are. Adjust your route if you have to.”

  He hung up and glanced around as more of the spores appeared in the sky, and Carolyne screamed as one of them sm
ashed into the dirt road not far ahead.

  “Papa Jack–” Jahni called out, but her grandfather did not alter his course. He set his face in determination and planted his foot on the accelerator.

  “Hang on!” he cried.

  Jahni watched as the spore began to crack open. On the outside it looked like a burnt cocoon the size of a buffalo, drenched in yellow mucus. From within came a creature with lumpy black and grey skin, a gnarled exterior that almost appeared to have the texture of volcanic rock. It stumbled out into the road, its two legs wobbling as it attempted to find its feet, its stocky arms and torso catching the late afternoon sun. As it turned to look at them, Jahni saw eyes that were jet black, malevolent. Full of hate and malice.

  It was one of them. The Argoni.

  Her skin crawled with revulsion and loathing, and her heart thumped in her chest like a mad thing as they bore down on it.

  Then the pickup ploughed into the creature, and it rebounded off the hood and went spinning away across the other side of the road. Papa Jack ducked to check his side mirror, then whooped happily.

  “Hey, whaddya know? I think that thing took the dent right out of my fender.”

  The other children laughed, more from a sense of relief than anything else, Jahni decided, but she couldn’t bring herself to join them.

  Out across the nearby fields, more Argoni were hatching. More spores were arcing through the sky with their deadly payloads nestled inside.

  “How are they doing this?” she said, trying to keep calm for her siblings’ sake. “How are there secondaries so soon?”

  “There just are, Jahni,” Papa Jack said. “Focus. What’s next?”

  Silently berating herself for not remaining calm, she took another deep breath. There was another safeguard against the Argoni attacks that she’d almost forgotten—the Sentinel.

  Looking out through her window, she located the tall spire of metal on a nearby ridge. An automated defence system, it was designed to detect Argoni in the area and open fire on them.