by A. J. Allan
“Move!”
The soldiers moved through what looked more like a tunnel than an actual hallway and found Kowalski, firing his gun, as an enemy grabbed at his leg. With a clean motion, it severed the leg from his body. Kowalksi howled in pain as the other soldiers laid out suppressive fire, taking out the enemy and giving them a clean run at Kowalski. Andrews removed his shirt to try and create a tourniquet around Kowalski’s stump from his hip.
“Dammit, soldier, when you said you could take them out with one leg, you didn’t have to mean it literally!”
Kowalski didn’t respond.
“Kowalski! Firestone!”
But his eyes glazed over. The enemy had killed him.
“Damn!” their CO said. “OK, here’s the plan. See how there’s blood circulating in these walls? We’re inside the organism. If we follow that blood, we’ll probably reach the heart. And when we reach the heart, we destroy that son of a bitch until there’s no more cells in that organ. Let’s move!”
The squad moved, but not before Lopez took one last look at Kowalski. Here was his final resting spot, not on Earth, not in a human ship, not in an explosion, but inside a massive space organism, controlled by aliens hellbent on destroying humanity, with his left leg lying five feet away from him.
War was truly hell. War was truly unforgiving and merciless.
48
The tunnels that lay ahead bore more troubles than just darkness and terror. The soldiers had more to fear than fear itself. From every crevice, from every hole, from every spot in the wall, even on some of the ceiling spots and in the floor, the xenoroaches appeared. The members of Apocalypse Squad had infiltrated not a ship but an entire colony of monsters, a hive of the beasts.
Thanks to their experiences on the ground and their battles in the air, the soldiers faced the creatures without freezing. No longer did they look at the monsters as tall as basketball hoops and shudder in fear. No longer did they hear those horrifying shrieks, those flickering wings, or their steps, and quake as the beasts approached. No longer did the smell overwhelm them.
It kept them on edge. But it did not push them over the edge.
Even as they pushed further into the depths of the ship, even as they suffered burn and cut wounds—Lopez and Lake on their arms, Li on his face, Andrews on his shoulder blade, Abayomi on his hip—the soldiers continued forward. They carried with them the burden of the dead, their friends and humanity alike, but that weight transformed into a catalyst when they pulled triggers and aliens perished. A few scars here and there meant nothing when they could still breathe, could still briefly imagine a future on Earth without fear of aliens, could imagine finding love again—or returning to a loved one.
As they pushed further into the depths of the living ship, things became more difficult. The air became thicker. The walls and floor on which they moved pulsed harder and faster, the very heartbeat and blood flow of the enemy accelerating.
Because of fear? Was that possible? Lopez chose to believe it.
Any psychological edge he could get, he would use. If he thought the enemy had gotten scared, he’d believe it. The aliens came out in greater hordes, but the numbers just meant more trigger-pulling. Andrews had the team moving through the living caverns like a true tactical unit, deploying effective cover-and-fire and advancement techniques.
After winding through what felt like a dozen different tunnels and killing hundreds of the aliens, they came to an open room. The room featured a beating heart on the wall about the size of a ship’s engine. It beat out in the open, an easy target for the humans.
But in between them and the wall lay hundreds, if not thousands, of eggs. Enough to wipe clean Earth, Churchill, all of the dreadnoughts, all of the TRAPPIST-1 colonies, and then take over a decent chunk of the Solar System just for fun.
“Goddamn,” Lt. Andrews said. “We gotta blow this place to high hell. We can’t let this thing crash-land on Earth.”
Without warning, xenoroaches surrounded the room, but did not advance upon the humans. They formed a circle, preventing all avenues of retreat, but still did not come further.
Lopez gulped. They’re letting something else come for us. Something much worse.
A shrill scream pierced the haunting air, and he turned to see what was happening. From the wall, a massive xenoroach’s head burst through. The head easily dwarfed the other xenoroaches, capable of chewing up twenty of its smaller brethren in one bite. From the sides of the wall, arms came forward, curling their fingers, eager to swipe and kill. The hands could grab any of the humans and crunch them within seconds. And just barely visible through the wall, the giant alien’s stomach gurgled.
“Good news is we found the queen,” Lt. Andrews said. “Bad news is, she found us.”
49
With a roar, the soldiers unleashed a cascade of lasers at the queen, who shrieked in response. She razed her left hand across the battlefield with frightening speed, and Lopez barely ducked. He still felt the wind pass him by as the hand flew. He looked left—Lt. Andrews, Lake, and Li still stood. But…
“Abayomi!” he shouted.
But the soldier—or what remained of him—was thrown against the wall. The queen picked up the crumpled body, produced a guttural cry that sounded like a laugh, and then chomped him, chewing the remains of the last soldier from Nellis before swallowing him, leaving nothing behind.
“Fucking hell!” Lake roared as she unleashed a torrential downpour of ammo upon the monster.
The beast recoiled as Lake’s shots landed on its face. It was certainly not immune to arms fire, and its lack of mobility gave the humans an advantage.
But the queen xenoroach swung her arms once more. Knowing what was coming, the humans dodged it, but this time, a xenoroach jumped into the action and bounded toward them. Only the quick trigger of the CO kept the monster from ambushing one of the remaining soldiers.
“Loose!” he yelled. “You and I are in charge of keeping those baby roaches off our fucking tails. Mav and Monster! Take out that ugly fucker and end this now!”
Andrews and Li swept the area with their rifles. If all of the xenoroaches chose to attack at once, the humans would die. Four against a couple hundred didn’t add up. But the aliens feared the queen as much as the humans did. One smaller alien came too close to the queen, which snatched it up, threw it into her mouth, and crunched on the monster, its only remains its wings fluttering to the ground.
Lopez and Li concentrated their fire on her face, but the beast continued. Lopez dropped his gun lower. He aimed for the beating heart of the beast and fired two rounds.
The entire living ship shook with a quake. The queen cried out in pain with a wail so high, had it come from any other organism, it would have drawn sympathy from Lopez.
“Aim for the heart!” Lopez shouted.
“Whatever you guys are doing, you better hurry the fuck up!” Lt. Andrews shouted. “There’s more of them coming!”
They know. We’re about to finish this off.
Lopez and Lake lined up their guns, their firepower complimenting each other. When one overheated, the other continued firing. When one paused, the other kept going. The queen stood no chance, and even as she waved her arms in a desperate attempt to catch the humans, she could not aim properly.
“Mav! Monster!”
Then, with a sudden burst, the heart exploded, blood gushing everywhere, including onto Apocalypse Squad. The queen twitched one final time before collapsing to the ground.
The monsters squealed, clutched their heads, and fell to their knees. Lopez rose from his right knee and helped Lake up. They smiled and high-fived, and turned their attention to the monsters on the ground. Along with Li and Lt. Andrews, they cleared the area of the squealing bugs. Never had eradicating cockroaches felt so fun and so rewarding.
“Die, fuckers!” Lake shouted. “This is for all the people you killed! All my friends! All my people! You assholes!”
Lopez did the same. He entered into a
trance where the monsters beneath him became nothing more than savages. He did not feel sympathy for the enemy. He did not want to give it a chance to surrender. He remembered the woman in the biopod. The soldiers in the other ships. All of the humans who, because they could not pay $50 million, had died at the hands of these monsters without ever knowing it. Jordan. Abayomi. Kowalski.
“Lake! Lopez!”
The firm arms of Andrews brought the young private out of his killing spree, and only then very slowly and very gradually. When he came to, the bodies of hundreds of aliens, hundreds of eggs, and the head of the queen lay on the ground, bleeding out into the ground.
“It’s over, Lopez,” Andrews said. He had never sounded so exhausted in his life. “You killed the queen. You killed the ship. And, by appearances of what happened here, we probably killed most of the roaches on Earth, too. Or at least made them inoperable. We’ll put that on the punks at UGM who fled to clean up. Our job is done. Mission accomplished.”
Victory felt so sweet. But it became bittersweet quite fast.
Kowalski would never get to finish his novel. Abayomi… what dreams did he have? What would he fail to accomplish? Jordan would never get to marry Irons. And poor Irons, not technically a widow, but certainly forever without the man whom she loved.
And it’s not like the rest of them escaped unscathed too. Lopez had no idea how, if it was even possible, he could ever forget what he had seen and experienced in the last couple of days. He shuddered at experiencing PTSD. Sure, the UGM might claim they could genetically recalibrate matters and remove it, but could they actually do that? Andrews sometimes sure showed it, if not overtly.
But those worries could come another day. For now, they had won. They had a relatively clear path back to the BVs. They could parachute back to Earth. And Lopez would win his damn bet with Irons.
The survivors turned and made their way out.
Then they heard a loud crack.
50
In the far recesses of the queen’s lair, an egg cracked open. Lopez trained his gun toward it, but Andrews held him back.
“If it moves without trouble, blast the fucker to hell,” he said. “Don’t bother if it’s just gonna pop out and have seizures, though.”
They watched closely as the egg split open. A hand emerged, and then the rest of the alien. Compared to the full-sized aliens, this was more of a nuisance than a legitimate threat. It was only about three feet long, its claws dull, and its wings not yet grown.
But there was one problem. It was somehow unaffected by the queen’s death.
“Damn!” Lt. Andrews shouted after Lopez had killed the spawn with a single shot. “They must inculcate the newborns into the queen’s mind somehow. Probably also means we don’t have all the time in the world to eradicate the roaches on Earth before they get their mind back.”
He unearthed the bomb that he had brought with him. It was no larger than an MRE container, but with technological advancements, Lopez knew it packed more power than a 21st century hydrogen bomb.
“We gotta blow this place to shit,” he said. “Let’s move!”
The soldiers ran as quickly as they could, no longer worried about the aliens writhing on the ground, trying to get a sense of their location. They did, however, worry about the sound of hundreds of eggs cracking, as small little xenoroaches emerged, let out infantile screeches, and scuttled along the ground, in search of food, nourishment, anything.
A couple of the full-grown, incapacitated aliens on the ground became troublesome when their twitches nearly struck the humans, but a few well-placed bullets ended that threat. By and large, the biggest danger was the flood of new monsters coming from behind them as they charged.
They reached the BVs moments later. The bomb in Lt. Andrews’ hand had not yet been activated, but with a single switch, the CO had the bomb counting down.
“We got sixty seconds to get our asses out!” he said. “Move!”
The CO helped all of the crew members into their pods, which required about an eight-foot climb up. Lake and Li got up first, leaving just Lopez and Andrews.
“Sir! Are you—”
“I can climb just fine, I’m not that old,” the CO said. “Get in!”
“Sir, I—”
“If you have something to say and you’re afraid I won’t hear it, know that I have ears beyond the grave. I’ll see you in the Atlantic Ocean!”
Andrews helped Lopez up. The position was awkward—he had not gone in on his back, but on his stomach. The straps automatically held him down, preventing him from moving, but he still had a glass window from which to view the ship. He heard the roars of Lt. Andrews and prayed that the CO got out. If he died… who would lead?
Irons. Would have to. But Andrews—
His thoughts ended when the BV fired up its fuel, propelling the vehicle away from the enemy ship and toward Earth. It only had a tiny amount of fuel, just enough to get it within Earth’s gravity, but it did more than enough.
It also gave Lopez a chance to view the ship from afar now. The once vibrant, dark red ship now looked like an ugly, decaying brown. The three red orbs that had orbited it now just clung to the side. Whatever those orbs were—Lopez had only seen the one attack—it remained a mystery. There were so many questions that Lopez had after this encounter.
Where did the noctura come from? Why had they come? Why was it they got a video transmission from them, but they never spoke to them in any other fashion? Were the ones on Earth affected by the alien queen much like the aliens on board the ship were?
And what would happen next?
Would the UGM return? Would they get treated as heroes? Or would there be some glory grab by the UGM to keep Apocalypse Squad from becoming too big for its own good, in the military’s view?
And if he got a hero’s reception… could he finally overturn the Pence Protocol? Could he and Lake just live normal lives?
The questions became more frequent as gravity slowly took over his ship, dragging him into orbit and carrying him away from the enemy vessel.
Then, in a blinding flash, so bright that even with his eyes closed, Lopez wished he could move his hand to block the blinding light, the explosion went off. The alien vessel vanished into a giant mushroom cloud. The force of the explosion knocked Lopez into gravity faster, and within seconds, the darkness of space had added clouds from the Earth’s atmosphere.
He had no idea if Lt. Andrews had made it. He could only pray that Irons’ uncle and his CO, for as much as a hard ass as he could be, had survived. He didn’t know how the squad would handle it if he disappeared.
51
Lopez floated through space almost as if in the afterlife. He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t see anything other than whiteness. He couldn’t move his body, though he could feel the forces of gravity slowly tugging him back down to Earth. If an alien had killed him, he would not have known the difference.
Had the others made it? Specifically, the CO?
Slowly, very slowly, his hearing and his vision returned. His BV was gently spinning through space, tumbling toward the Earth. By all accounts, the UGM boarding vehicles had not had a crash in years, but of course, this wasn’t a UGM BV—it was a USSF. Still, Lopez took some comfort in knowing the BVs on the Eagle were designed to last in the true apocalypse and didn’t worry too much about his fate.
He heard the joyful screaming of a pleasantly familiar voice.
“Nicely done!” Irons shouted, her voice coming through clearly on the speakers of the BV. “You fuckers actually pulled that off. I didn’t even get a shot in. Goddamn!”
She wouldn’t be this happy if her uncle wasn’t alive. But does she know? Or has she recognized that—
“God. Damn.”
It was a weary and exhausted curse, not one filled with the euphoria of victory. Lopez felt it too—the exhaustion of what they had done to accomplish their mission. In the span of a little over 24 hours, they’d survived a space assault, crash-landed in the
most unforgiving terrain in the United States, walked over 30 miles, fended off the aliens multiple times, dealt with the trauma of death and violence, infiltrated the aliens’ space craft, blown up its queen, and escaped through pods just barely large enough for their bodies—and they hadn’t even finished that yet.
No military unit could ever design a boot camp or combat simulation that unforgiving, because no military had ever faced death incarnate as Apocalypse Squad had. But the squad rode in on their toughness, their friendship, their love and loyalty for each other, and a certain amount of luck. Lopez wasn’t about to believe that had they run this order of events out a hundred more times, he would’ve survived most of the time. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if he had survived the one in a hundred times this event could play out.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said for others in the squad. Jordan. Kowalski. Abayomi. As much as the human mind wanted to find a reason for the fates of each individual soldier, it was largely a matter of luck. Had the space pollen taken out a different gun station on the first ship, forcing another crew member to hunker down, making the crash landing fatal for them… had another BV gone too far away from the group, leading that soldier to defend themselves before the calvary came… had another soldier gone in to the queen’s lair before the rest… had, had, had. If, if, if.
More than ever, as the glass on his BV fogged up and the blistering heat of re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere consumed Lopez’s shuttle, he felt a sense of duty to figure out why he fought. He’d joined the military to escape confinement in a bio-pod no bigger than what he was in now, but that was not why he fought. When the battle first began, he fought out of instinct and to survive. But once the immediate threat left, he fought for himself.
Then, slowly, he began fighting for his friends. For Lake. For Lopez. For Jordan. Even for Andrews.
But was that good enough?
Maybe it was. It sure seemed like it as the eastern part of the United States consumed his view. But too much had happened, much of it affecting the way Lopez saw things, for him not to question everything. Who he was. What he fought for. What he would let slide. What he would become.