What had just seconds ago been two individuals with minds, with hopes and fears and aspirations of their own, had now become a multi-limbed thing that followed only the will of its master. And its master willed it to destroy.
The second its feet touched the ground, the aberration took off at breakneck speed toward the trench, slather flying from its mouth, a mouth that was now full of fangs sharp as knives. Leaping over any obstruction, it dove into the arroyo where the soldiers had taken refuge, its head low to the ground as if it was tracking a scent. Quickly it followed the trench, leaping on any human it found. Two men fell in bloody succession to it before it was finally taken down with a burst of automatic fire from a blonde-haired Jegertroppen.
Mac turned to his wife. "You need to go now, Emily," he insisted, worry lines making his face look twenty years older than he really was.
"No," Emily said, "not yet. I can still help."
Mac grabbed her by her arm. "We've lost, Emily. It's a matter of minutes at best before we're overrun. You need to leave now, while you can still—"
A shadow, vast and fast moving, passed over the battlefield, blotting out the sun, turning day to evening. In its shade, it seemed to Emily as if everything and everyone was suddenly frozen in place; even the once-human mutants and their alien masters appeared to have been shocked into immobility.
"Ho-lee shit," Mac exclaimed, his eyes fixed on the sky.
Emily looked up, too.
High above their heads, the outline of a Caretaker ship, huge beyond comparison to anything humanity had ever created or envisioned, moved silently and serenely over their positions from the east, led by its shadow as it swept across the dead ground surrounding the entrance to the Locusts' lair.
"Adam!" Emily whispered, from between lips devoid of any moisture. When she and Rhiannon had first encountered this Caretaker vessel at the end of their search for Adam, she had thought the ship was made from the same material as a black hole, sucking in all light to create a perfect blackness. Now, watching the ship—it was the same ship, she was certain—as it blotted out the sky above her, that same thought held true. But back then, only the dome-like upper section of the ship had been visible, the rest of the spacecraft buried deep within the Earth's crust. Now the full size of the ship was revealed...and it was mighty.
Beneath the convex dome of utter blackness, jagged mountain-sized protrusions, like gigantic shards of broken glass projected toward the ground. Each multi-faceted surface shimmered and scintillated, giving off color of every hue and shade; as though the light that could not escape the perfect blackness of its upper portion was somehow broken down into all of its possible component frequencies. It was, Emily thought, the most beautiful and terrifying thing she had ever seen.
The ship came to a dead stop, positioned perfectly over the opening of the shaft. For several moments, it hung silently in the sky, then, in Emily's mind, she heard her son's voice, "Prepare yourselves." Before Emily could ask what she should prepare for, the shards beneath the ship turned as obsidian as the top of the craft, creating a hole in the sky so devoid of anything other than its perfect black nothingness that Emily was forced to avert her eyes, for fear she would find herself falling into that never-ending void. When she looked again, glancing through half-shut eyelids, the flow of energy into the open mouth of the shaft had changed; now it flowed upward from the ground into the abyssal nothingness of the ship.
A violent, deafening, roar shook the ground beneath Emily's feet, as a vortex of energy spewed up from the shaft, surging into the blackness that was Adam's ship. The ground heaved and buckled beneath Emily's feet, sending plumes of gray dust spiraling into the air where it hung like fog, then slowly began to drift to the ground. Through the gray haze, Emily saw the Locust that had created the mutant begin to twitch and convulse, its arms spasming. The single eye rolled back into its socket. Emily searched through the pall of falling gray dust until she found the two other Locusts. They were experiencing the same effects as the first. Simultaneously, the three Locusts became rigid, as though a high voltage electrical charge was passing through their body. Streamers of yellow light drifted from their skin like finely spun yarn. The streamers flowed upward, toward the black ship, growing thicker and brighter with each passing second. The light was so intense it hurt Emily just to look, but she forced herself to squint through half-closed eyelids. There was a sudden flash of brilliant orange and yellow, like the flare of a struck match, as each Locust was simultaneously engulfed in a shimmering yellow bloom of energy that streamed from their bodies, joining with the pillar of energy flowing into Adam's ship. The light grew brighter and more intense by the second. The air seemed to be alive, crackling and sizzling with static. Emily thought she smelled burning but could not be sure, her mind overwhelmed by the multiples of sensory input flooding her body. The bloom of light surrounding the Locusts was ripped violently away from the aliens' bodies, flowing back to the main column, where it mingled and became one with the rush of energy as it roared into the ship high above. The three Locusts collapsed into a pile of twisted twitching limbs, fine wisps of yellow light still drifting from each body over the next few seconds until finally, that too stopped and the Locusts moved no more.
The roar of energy pouring from the shaft's mouth was deafening, its brilliance blinding, flooding Emily's senses almost into nonexistence. The roar grew louder. The light brighter. The ground beneath her feet shifted and undulated like water...
There was an abrupt change, a sound like something unimaginably huge tearing far, far above her head was followed by an earsplitting boom that echoed across the land...
Then there was only silence.
Emily forced her eyes open, the afterglow of the visual assault still a lingering ghost, haunting her optic nerve.
Slowly, Emily's vision returned and she surveyed the devastated battlefield.
Nothing moved other than the gray dust that swirled and rushed around her.
The three Locusts did not stir, but the constructs and the mutant-humans were still very much alive, unaffected by whatever force Adam had unleashed on the Locusts. They seemed as stunned by what had just happened as the surviving humans who were slowly pulling themselves to their feet around her were. The constructs and mutants were beginning to regain their senses too, but, she noted as her eyes drifted to the opening that no more of the fiends came from the shaft. Now there was only the column of escaping energy flowing into...an empty blue sky.
The ship, Adam's ship, had vanished, gone, leaving behind nothing but a faint smoky outline in the sky. Globes of white light, like falling stars, spiraled to the ground, impacting the dead ground surrounding the shaft.
"No," Emily whispered, then louder "No!"
Mac staggered to his feet a few meters away from Emily. He lurched his way to her.
"Are you okay?" Mac asked. His face was dirty and dust-striped.
"No. Yes," Emily said. "But the ship...Adam...He's gone."
Mac looked confused. "What?"
Emily was unable to speak. A terrible emptiness filled her chest as she watched what she believed could only be the burning debris of her son's ship fall from the sky. Her son. The ship. It was all gone. He had kept true to his promise, the Locusts were gone, dead—but at a terrible price. Adam, she was sure, was dead.
Without warning, the ground heaved beneath Emily's feet. She staggered, almost fell, but felt Mac's hand grab her own and pull her to him. They were barely able to remain on their feet as the ground continued to roll and dip, like waves on the surface of a storm-blown lake.
Emily frantically looked around her; some men and women had been knocked to the ground and were in the process of trying to get to their feet, others were leaning against rocks like she was, holding on for dear life, others were simply sitting on their butts trying to ride out whatever the hell was happening now. A loud crash marked the collapse of the ruined house as it crumbled into a pile of dust and rubble; if anyone was inside it they were surely cru
shed.
"What is it? What's happening?" Emily cried, steadying herself against the boulder.
Mac wobbled like a drunk as the shock waves continued to turn the ground beneath their feet to liquid. "Earthquake," he declared. "I think it's an earthquake."
Emily pulled herself hand over hand out of the trench. She gasped. "Mac! Mac! Look!" She pointed with her right hand and instantly regretted it as she lost her balance again and fell to the ground. She quickly scrambled to her feet and stood next to her husband, staring back toward the shaft's entrance. Blue, red, and green ribbons of energy shot from the shaft's mouth, rushing upward for kilometers into the California blue sky. From the ground, bolts of the same multi-colored light jumped and sparked...and killed.
Emily saw a bolt of energy hit a construct, it crumpled immediately to the ground, its legs curling into its abdomen like a dead ant. Another fell and another. The aliens were as unable to maneuver across the undulating ground as the humans and, exposed in the open, they were quickly falling prey to the energy pouring out of the shaft. The bucking grew more violent. A creaking, cracking, snapping sound unlike anything Emily had ever heard before pulled her attention away from the carnage being inflicted on the aliens to the ground just behind where she and the remainder of the assault team stood. A rupture, already a meter wide and growing wider by the second, opened in the earth five paces away from where Emily and Mac tried to keep their feet, tiny streamers of the same multi-colored energy leaked into the air from it. The rupture spread across the terrain at a steady pace, the ground snapping asunder with a terrifying crack.
"What the hell is—" Mac's words were replaced by a sudden expletive as the ground under their feet dropped violently, canting downward toward the rupture. Loose rocks and spent cartridge cases began to gradually roll toward the freshly opened fissure. Emily still had a firm grip of the boulder she had used for cover, others had no such anchor. She saw bodies tumble to the ground and begin to slide down the now-slanted shelf of ground they stood on toward the gaping mouth of the rupture. Mac started toward the nearest man but the ground beneath him abruptly dropped again and he stumbled, his hands flailing as he pitched forward, his legs trying to find some purchase to slow his steady fall in the direction of the ever-widening fissure.
"Mac!" Emily screamed, as her husband plummeted toward the edge of the rupture...and stopped, his boots finally finding some purchase on a thin crack of uneven rock, perilously close to the edge of the fissure. Mac's feet kicked gravel into the opening as they slipped then found their grip again. He had slowed his movement but not stopped it entirely; now he was edging toward the fissure by a couple of centimeters each time his feet lost their purchase.
Emily let go of the boulder she clung to, dropped to her butt, and began to scoot toward Mac.
"Help them," Emily yelled at the men to her left and right who had not yet noticed the growing fissure behind them, their minds transfixed by the tower of light thundering into the atmosphere or holding on for dear life to their own boulders and outcroppings.
Mac looked up at the sound of his wife's voice, his face set in a determined grimace as he fought to maintain his precarious foothold.
"Stay where you are. Don't risk it," Mac yelled at her.
Emily said nothing, but continued to edge closer to him, all the time praying that the ground would not suddenly drop again, while trying to ensure that she did not lose her own tentative balance. When she was a half-meter away from Mac, she planted her left foot into a small indentation in the ground, barely big enough to slip the edge of the heel of her right boot in. It was not much for her to trust both her own and Mac's weight too, but it was all she had. She unslung her shotgun, quickly loosened the leather sling, took the weapon by its barrel and leaned forward so it passed between her knees, the leather strap dropping to where Mac struggled to hold on for his life.
"Take it," she hissed.
Mac reached for the strap, his fingers almost touching it. Emily leaned in farther, trying to stretch every last centimeter out of her tight muscles, but Mac's fingers could not quite reach.
The ground kicked again, launching Emily and Mac into the air. Emily dropped back down hard onto her butt, landing almost exactly in the same spot, her foot quickly scrambling to find the same small indentation and steady herself. Mac landed face first, his nose erupting in a gout of blood. He shifted closer to the edge of the widening fissure by a few centimeters. A yell for help to Emily's right momentarily drew her attention away. She saw a man who had been clinging to a rock and the soldier who had gone to rescue him tumbling down the incline. Both men slipped over the edge of the fissure and disappeared, their screams trailing behind them. Emily returned her focus to Mac. He lay completely still on the rock, a thin rivulet of blood flowing from his shattered nose. "Mac! Mac!" Emily cried.
He remained motionless for a few moments, then groaned, his hands clenching and unclenching. His head moved across the dirty ground as he lifted his head toward the sound of Emily's voice.
"Grab the sling! Grab it!" Emily hissed, nodding at the leather sling of the shotgun that now lay within easy reach of his right hand.
Mac looked confused for a moment, then his hand began moving toward the end of the sling. He finally found it and pulled it closer to himself, wrapping it around his fingers. He closed his hand in a tight fist. Then his head sank to the ground again. Emily leaned back, planted her feet as firmly as she could and pulled with all her might. Mac moved a few centimeters closer to her with a sound like dry sandpaper on wood as his body moved across the rock. Emily scooted her butt back up the sloping ground, repositioned her feet and pulled again.
"When...we...get...out...of...this..." she hissed through clenched teeth, drawing in a deep breath between each word, "you're...going...on...a...diet."
A high-pitched screech from behind Emily made her jump in surprise. She swiveled her head as far back over her left shoulder as she could...and felt the breath leave her body. Two constructs stood on the boulder she and Mac had sheltered behind. Somehow, they had managed to evade the energy that killed their comrades and now these two creatures stood surveying the helpless humans below them. One after another, the constructs leaped from the boulder to the ground and began making their way nimbly across the slab of rock toward Emily and Mac, their spiked legs giving them the purchase they needed to move quickly and confidently.
Emily froze. Her shotgun was Mac's only lifeline, his hands were entwined in its leather strap, so there was no way she could untangle it in time to turn it on the constructs. And if she reached for her pistol, one hand would have to let go of her end of the shotgun, and it was taking all her strength and grip just to hold on to Mac as it was.
Emily screeched and flinched as two bullets zipped past her head, followed the briefest of moments later by their reports. She looked in the direction of the gunshots and saw Petter kneeling on the other side of the widening fissure, a bolt-action rifle in his hands, smoke drifting upward from its muzzle. Emily screeched again as the body of one of the constructs tumbled past her and disappeared into the rupture. Two more shots rang out in quick succession and the second construct was down, whatever it was that passed for blood oozing from two large caliber bullet wounds that had ripped through its body.
Her hands shaking from fear and exhaustion, Emily turned back to Mac. His eyes met hers. He was conscious, at least. She pulled again, grunting with the exertion. Mac planted the flat of his free hand on the rock and used it to leverage himself upward, easing the burden somewhat on his wife. Emily scooted her butt back and pulled, repeating the process over and over until finally Mac could pull himself the remaining distance to her. When they reached the safety of the boulder, Mac's eyes were clear again, but his nose was obviously broken and the blood was refusing to stop. He spat a glob of blood from his mouth, then flopped down next to her, panting.
Emily pulled the radio from Mac's jacket and keyed the microphone, "Back to the beach, now. Everyone. Get out of here!"
Most of the remaining team had already managed to make it over the rupture and were stumbling toward where Major Petter and a collection of two Jegertroppen and four sailors waited, the sniper rifle he'd used to dispatch the constructs cradled in his arms like a baby, his eyes fixed firmly on Emily and Mac. The growing fissure separating Petter from them had expanded even farther, the ground opening up in a gradual curve that expanded to Emily's left and right.
"Can you stand?" she asked Mac.
Mac nodded. Unsteadily, he got halfway to his feet, leaning hard against the boulder.
Emily scanned the incline leading down to the fissure, searching for anything that would help her and Mac. She identified several large rocks and indentations between where she and Mac sat and the lip of the fissure. As she was formulating her route, the ground shook again, sending gray dust into the air, and pebbles and dirt skittering away into oblivion. "We've got to move now!" Emily told Mac. She stood, offered both hands to her husband, and pulled him unsteadily to his feet while she tried to retain her own balance.
Mac swayed for a second.
Emily looked back toward the shaft opening; the ground was littered with the smoldering bodies of the Locusts, their constructs, and mutant-humans. Nothing moved in that desolation now besides the twirling pillar of energy stretching skyward. In the distance, her eyes followed the still-expanding line of the rupture, its route betrayed by a sudden puff of dirt and the glitter of energy where the ground continued to split apart. She moved her eyes to the right and found the opposite end of the rupture. The two ends were less than a hundred meters short of meeting and becoming one massive, continuous chasm that would encircle the entrance to the Locusts' lair, she realized.
Extinction Point: Kings (Extinction Point Series (5 book series)) Page 22