“You all better kill it…cuz now we’re all in it together.” they could see the girls taking up defensive positions. If they failed it was up to the girls to get it as it tried to go under the door. As large as the males were, it was possible they could use the same tactic that Meg had used on the female, but if it got that far, neither of the men knew they’d be around to see if it worked or not. One other thing Sarge had learned, grinders had a tendency to seek revenge.
Both standing, the men stayed with their backs to the wall and slid along it as far as they could. Hitting the side wall of the large storage room they came upon the first shelf stacked to the ceiling with all kinds of old stuff. Old crates, boxes, and what looked to be airplane parts, it was difficult to see in the dust that the creature had kicked up.
Gil motioned down the first aisle, saw nothing, and the second, the same; all were clear and strewn with things the grinder had thrown about in its rage. The third aisle was clear and both looked at one another; one aisle left.
Spear at the ready and guns in hand both men leapt from the safety of the steel shelves and into the aisle to see a partially opened door that blew slightly open as the breeze blew across it.
“It got away.” Gil muttered softly knowing grinders couldn’t hear, but he still whispered and leaned against the shelving to support his wobbly legs as Sarge closed and bolted the door.
“Christ!”
What? Gil asked.
“Some asshole taped the latch on the damned door, probably left it that way so he could get back in. Trouble is, I didn’t see any bodies, so that means he didn’t come back, but the wind probably pulled the door open and the…” He looked over to see Gil panting nervously and trying to give him a grin as he nodded toward the now locked door. Sarge chuckled as Gil steadied himself on the tall shelves covered with boxes and dust.
“Wow!” Gil muttered as he pushed himself away from the shelves “That was close!”
“Yeah it was.” Sarge replied.
“Jesus Sarge, it’s all my fault, I never saw that damned door cracked opened when I circled earlier, the wind must have...” The next thing he knew something huge hit him like a ton of bricks and flattened him to the floor and pinned him. He screamed for Sarge to run as he realized that he was pinned on his stomach and could barely move. Using every ounce of strength he could muster Gil pushed the grinder off of him and rolled…to see the grinning Sarge standing over him.
“Hey, will ya look at that…the fucker bled to death.” he reached down and pulled Gil the rest of the way from underneath the grinder and stood him on his feet as the two girls ran around the corner. Weapons drawn and at the ready Sarge chuckled and told them what had happened.
As Sarge told them there was a gurgling sound that came from the grinder and all four began hacking, whacking, and beating the thing until it was pretty much pulp held together by warthog skin.
“Whoa guys, the bastard’s dead…think it was just a muscle twitch.” Sarge chuckled as the females glowered at him.
Meg put her hands on her hips and snarled “Well, dead or not, you two drag that bastard out of this hangar…NOW!” and pointed to the bolted door “And while you’re at it, drag that dead bitch out of here too.”
It wasn’t long before the grinders…both of them, hit the blacktop next to the hangar. Both the girls were thoroughly pissed, tossing the bodies out was thought to be a better option than suffering the wrath of two angry females.
Chapter 12.
As dark rolled in and the small group settled in for the night thoughts turned to the happenings of the day.
“Well, if nothing else guys we did get someplace that not only provides us with a few days of shelter, but all those boxes and crates might be of use.” Sarge smiled at Meg “Maybe even a birthday present for you babe.”
Meg laughed “You know damned well this isn’t my birthday baby.”
“Yeah, but as we were riding for our lives the week it was, maybe now we can…” he looked over to Izzy who was frowning and tapped her on her knee.
Isabella tried to smile, but instead just frowned again.
“It’s just that I have a much older sister and the last time I saw her I was four…a few months before the grinders began dropping out of the blue. Oh there were rumors, but not in our city yet.”
“Ten years ago? Geez, I’d been asleep for five by then.” Gil asked softly “Did she die?”
“No…well maybe,” Izzy looked at him sadly “don’t know where she is. I really don’t remember her much, but mom told me about her. She said that Sue had said that she was going to Florida when she got out of rehab, and that it was possible that she had been in jail for…” she stopped abruptly and then figured it didn’t matter anymore, protecting her missing sister’s reputation was pointless “prostitution. Oh sure, even with all that, I still missed her. Whenever we were transferred to another survivor camp I’d sneak off and look for her.” she smiled softly “After a few years I found out that mom had been doing the same thing, but we never found her. Even after mom died I looked. Then the plague those things brought with them got really bad, so many died I knew sis was dead too…” Izzy looked at the hangar floor as tears welled in her eyes “so many died…so many…she…”
Sarge nodded “We know honey, took most of the world’s population, he looked over to Gil “you see, we’re the lucky ones.” then snorted and rolled his eyes.
Gil put his arm around her and gave her a little squeeze “You survived, we all survived…Izzy, there’s no reason why this sister of yours…uh…”
“Sue”
“Sue, could have made it. She might even be looking for you about now. Didn’t you say she was in rehab? Hell, she could have kicked the habit and now could be living in Florida.”
Izzy gave Gil a half smile and laid her head on his arm “Maybe…I…guess, maybe.”
“There ya go honey.” Sarge smiled “If humanly possible we’ll find your sis.”
Meg smiled and nodded and then a strange grin crossed her lips. Before anyone could ask, she leaned back against some old crates and gave them a thoughtful look.
“Something has been bugging me since day one of this invasion.” She looked at Gil who she knew hadn’t been present back then.
“It must have been about five years, give or take, after they put you in stasis. The grinders began dropping out of the blue, or I guess blackness would be better. Always about three or four feet off the ground. At first…Jesus Gil, they popped up by the thousands and began feasting, by the end of the first night they weren’t eating anymore, just killing…”
“Slaughtering is a better word babe.” Sarge added.
“That is a better description, slaughtering. No sooner than one would strike a fatal wound, they’d head for the next victim. The city streets ran with blood and it was the same the next night. It was about the third day that some broadcasts told everyone to stay inside at night, to hide, to…the ones that popped out during the day made a mad dash to any structure they could find and banged on it until something gave…usually a window. Whoever was inside just died and then they’d come out as soon as night fell.” Megan was getting mad and Gil could see it “Cower in the night is all we did. There had never been a report of a grinder appearing inside a building, or structure of any kind, so we worked day and night trying to find something to stop them. But that damned third day was when the swarms began coming out of nowhere. Huge swarms, swarms of millions of those flesh-eating insects, entire cities gone in an instant. Then what was left of the government hit them with sprays and failed. Finally realizing drastic measures needed to be taken, they firebombed entire cities at night where they hid while the grinders were out roaming. Day or night humans were prey…and then came the plague. Some said it was the grinders, some the swarms,” she snorted a half laugh “some said it was us trying to wipe them out. When the plague hit my group my team was assigned to find a cure…” she looked at the other three as she slowly shook her head “it wasn’t us guys, it was
some alien strain...virus. The last we heard, before every government on Earth went dark, better than half of the world’s population was infected and dying. Less than ten percent ever recovered, and most of the survivors you see now are those that had a natural immunity and that ten percent that survived the disease.”
“And that’s been bugging you?” Gil asked.
“Oh no…no Gil, it wasn’t any of the above, it was during those days…” she frowned “Jesus, I can’t believe I forgot.”
Sarge grinned “Well babe, you have been busy surviving…and saving my ass.”
Meg leaned forward and put her arms around the muscular Sarge. “It’s been so long ago, and listening to Izzy talk about her sister, well…” her mind drifted back a nearly a decade “Those swarms stung grinders and if enough of them got through that thick hide, it would paralyze them and just like humans, they’d be eaten while alive. Not from the outside, but they’d crawl in through the mouth or eat the eyes and get in that way. All that would be left was bones and skin. We tried using venom from trapped insects, but it never worked. My boss said that she thought the venom had to be fresh to work and it had some sort of enzyme in it that helped the venom attack the prey’s nervous system. Oh hell, we never could find the damned enzyme as we never could find a live swarmer. We tried netting them with steel wire nets…as you know they can’t bite through steel.” she sighed “For some reason they died when trapped. Just before we were over run, we found that they have to be flying to get enough oxygen to live. Some brave souls went out at night and studied them from inside of the mesh cages we made and found that they go into some sort of hibernation every night.” she chuckled quietly “Turns out they need sunlight to kick start them, thus every morning they wake up and come out. Even the grinders leave them alone in the trees or wherever they roost for the night, but the swarmers sure don’t hesitate to attack sleeping grinders if they find them during the day, the damned things know to look inside of buildings and things….as if they were designed to hunt grinders.”
Gil looked hopelessly lost “So that bugged you how? I mean I’ve seen them on cloudy days, in rain, hell, even heard they survive in winter.”
“No, not the swarmers. Look guys, these things came out of nowhere, right?” they nodded that they had.
“What the hell do you think the odds are that grinders would drop out of thin air at night and swarmers would during day? At least mostly.”
“Damned remote odds, I’d say.” Gil muttered still unsure of Megan’s point.
“Guys…things just don’t pop out of thin air.”
“Portals?” Gil muttered softly.
“Portals.” Meg replied “So if you look at the odds being against two kinds of creatures from two different worlds popping right down here on Earth…”
Gil rolled his eyes and groaned “those things most likely are from the same planet.”
“RIGHT!” Meg took a breath “So as the day and night thing happens, I always figured that these things were enemies.”
“Logical.” Sarge added.
“But what bugged me is…is a lion and an antelope each other’s enemy? No, food source! Don’t you see guys, this isn’t some freak of nature, it can’t to be. My biggest problem was if neither came out during the other’s time to be awake what did they feed upon?” This time she had them all looking lost.
“There has to be a third source of food. One that similar to us, you know, is out and about at all hours of the day to be preyed upon. Now then next question is, did any of that food source pop out here on Earth…and if it did, can we learn anything from it?”
Gil looked at Meg and snorted his reply “If it falls prey as easily as we did, I doubt it.”
Sarge nodded “What puzzled me was; I saw those damned swarms when they first came through. I was with a flamethrower team as twenty flamethrowers hunted and set fire to nearly ninety percent of a fairly large town to burn them all and with so much of the town burning, still small swarms got away when morning came. Now and then we’d find dead ones just lying around, no one had any idea what killed them. I have no real answers, but I do know before the radios became silent, there were reports that many nuclear countries were nuking their own cities as a last resort…some even nuked their own major cities.” he sighed, “I don’t think we did…God, I hope we never did.”
Gil was frowning and drew questionable looks from the rest as the dozing Izzy still leaned on his shoulder. “Look guys…crap!” he sighed “Sorry, was going to say something but I’m so damned tired…” he grinned “in, out, gone.”
Izzy looked up from Gil’s shoulder and yawned “You old people talk too much, I’m going to sleep…g’night.” She rolled off Gil’s shoulder and into her spread out sleeping bag.
“Me too.” Sarge muttered as he rose and walked over to the small office where he had made a room for him and Meg. Izzy didn’t seem to care that another woman was now more important to Sarge than she was. Gil figured that she looked to Sarge as a big brother…or father figure.
Gil crawled over to the other side of the small LED light they used to sit around and sprawled out on his blanket. Meg knelt beside Gil and spoke softly…
“I guess what I have been trying to spit out all night is, if all these things have the same world in common, they might have the same weakness.”
“You mean like a virus, killing off the invaders from Mars in War of the Worlds?”
Megan sighed deeply “Naw…would have done so by now.” she smiled and dimmed the light “Besides I’m a chemist not a virologist…just that this thing keeps bugging me and…” she sighed “maybe someday, it’ll jump into view. Always something bugging me, like why that one grinder didn’t take Sarge’s arm off, it just released him for some reason…why.” She sighed and yawned “So many questions, so few answers.” Meg patted Gil on his arm and smiled warmly “Goodnight Gil, see you all in the morning.”
Chapter 13.
Every one of them had taught themselves to sleep with one eye open, and they did. Gil would roll over and look over to Izzy and she’d be staring at the ceiling until she drifted off again. Gil would get up and wander the perimeter of the hangar and would bump into Sarge or Megan. Same as it had been since they teamed up, every night, all night. None could figure out if it was fear or just good safety practices, but they were not going to be caught unaware. Perhaps it was the fact that they had shut themselves in with a pair of grinders, maybe it bothered them that they had become lax. Outside in the distance a pair of screams could be heard, at least in this steel hangar they were safe.
**************************
As morning rolled around and breakfast was finished, the guys checked out the small warehouse for anything they could use while the girls checked for danger out the windows. In the warehouse Sarge walked around the edge of the first row of shelves and grunted.
“Well that was a fuckin’ waste of my time.” he indignantly snorted “Might have been good if there was such a thing as a working plane anymore.” he frowned and began working on the far end of the row of shelves that Gil was on.
“Nothing here that can fix any of those old crates sitting out there disintegrating on the tarmac.”
“Yep, same here. I’m so tired of…” he paused long enough so Sarge looked down the row of boxes of parts.
“Gil?”
“Hey Sarge? You remember yesterday when we dragged those grinders out the side door?” Sarge nodded as he frowned and walked over to the next shelf and began going through the many smaller boxes.
“There was a building out back…looked like the back of a big garage that faced away from us.”
“So?” Sarge stopped and looked at his new friend “What if it has a working car, we can’t run it on av-gas.” he laughed “assuming that there is any av-gas in the tanks here.” he grinned at Gil “Look you’re the pilot, but won’t aviation gas ruin a motor?”
“Eventually, depending upon the engine, fuel mix, and stuff like that.” he looke
d at the wall as if he was looking through it “Well, you stay here and look through these boxes, I have gotten my curiosity up now. See ya in a bit.”
“Oh no ya don’t flyboy.” Sarge caught up to Gil before he could look out through the barred window. “Can’t let ya have all the fun.”
Gil smiled and looked around outside and as far as he could see, it was clear. To their right was the bodies of the grinders that they had killed the previous day, to the left, just the open space between them and the next hanger. Gil could see the rear of the other hanger, but not theirs, nor the garage. He looked at Sarge and nodded as he pulled his machete that Sarge had given him.
Razor sharp and deadly, Gil prayed that it would cut through grinder flesh like Sarge told him it should, and gripped it tightly as Sarge peeked out the side door. The door opened outward and Sarge slowly stepped half out of Gil’s view. As he neared the door he saw Sarge wave his arm, a loud gurgle, and a muffled shout…Sarge vanished.
Gil didn’t hesitate as he raised the machete over his head and burst through the door to see Sarge standing between the two hangers grinning.
“Nice to see ya care.” Sarge chuckled “Hell buddy, we needed a little levity.” He patted Gil on his back as they headed toward the rear of the hangars and the tall garage that could be partially seen.
Gil nodded “Yeah seems that humor is not so common these days, and that’s not like me. Hell Sarge, I used to be the one that would pull something like what you just did to me.”
Sarge held up his hand and they both stopped as he slowly shook his head as he looked at his raised hand and grinned “Jesus, it’s just training Gil. I know grinders can’t hear, nor the swarms, so don’t ask me why I still instinctively use hand signals.”
“Uh…the key word would be instinctively, doh.”
Sarge chuckled and nodded to the north “You go that way, I’ll go the other and we meet around in front. Sing out if you see or hear anything…” he looked at Gil “can you whistle loudly?”
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