Unfiction

by Gene Doucette

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “And if it’s a base, it could be manned. And armed.”

  The station looked like an asymmetrical pyramid, or one that used to be symmetrical before something tragic happened with the foundation. A series of horizontal gashes scored the top third of the triangle. These were vents for the underground air recycling system, but they could also be gun perches.

  “You’re thinking we might have cover,” she said.

  “That’s what I’m thinking, yeah.”

  “Seems risky.”

  “We can’t stay here all day. If we fall, we may as well fall forward.”

  “Never backward,” she said. It was a rallying cry they learned during the training they never had: Always forward, never backward. Oliver thought it was a good lesson to ingrain in a foot soldier you were training to run toward danger, although maybe not the best advice to someone who hoped to survive a battle. Cannon fodder needed that kind of motivation.

  “All right,” Minnie said, “we do this in steps. Hit the tree at the corner, then across to the store with the awning, the pickup truck, and then straight for the mouth of the station.”

  “Roger.”

  They bumped fists, then forearms, then slapped each other on the shoulders, a complex gesture of affection honed by years of training and working together, none of which actually happened. It was their secret handshake.

  “On three,” she said.

  It was a slow three-count, because she was actually waiting until one of the aliens above became engaged in the tree, on the assumption that this would mean there was one-less attacker to worry about for at least one part of this suicide sprint.

  When it happened, they went. She took the lead, both because she was faster and because she was still, technically, his commanding officer, if they cared about those things.

  They didn’t make it all the way to the tree across the street before being noticed. One of the flyers spotted them, and swung in low and fast from the left, parallel with the street they were crossing. Minnie slowed down and gave herself up as bait because Oliver had the better shot. He took it, with a dialed-back pulse blast that shredded the alien’s wings. It skidded across the street between them. He jumped over the stunned bug’s twitching body and kept rolling.

  At the new tree, Oliver took a quick look over his shoulder. Three bugs in the air, two landing, all looking back at him.

  We’re not going to make it, he thought.

  From the tree to the awning wasn’t so bad, but another quick glance made it clear the aliens were working on a plan of their own.

  “What do they even want?” he asked.

  “Right now they want to keep us from getting to the rendezvous point, and that’s all we need to know.”

  They made for the pickup truck at the same time one of the aliens dove through the awning, which wasn’t nearly as effective at preventing an attack as the trees had been. It ended up tangled in the canvas, though, which was good. But the bugs near the trees were making their play now, and it was a good one. Three new attackers landed in the street in front of the station, called in from wherever these things originated. Five behind, three in front, and nothing above their heads.

  “This would be a great time for someone in the station to provide us with some of that cover you were hoping for, wouldn’t you say?” Minerva said.

  “Sure would.”

  Just then, a ninth bug dropped in from the sky, right onto the roof of a truck. It came down so fast the perimeter detectors didn’t see it until it was landing. They both fell back, Minnie firing before she even hit the pavement. Her aim was a little off; the cannon shot glanced off the bug’s face. It shrieked, and jumped directly overhead.

  Ollie blew him apart with a blaster setting at nine, showering both of them in bug guts.

  “Yuck,” she said, getting to her feet. “Move, Ollie.”

  The bugs were trying a pincer assault, pinning them between two forces, having learned, perhaps, that they could only fire the blasters so often and at so many targets.

  Minnie went with a direct charge at the three between her and the rendezvous point. It was a smart call, if only because the next overhead assault would have more trouble with a rapidly moving target. It closed the gap between her and the bugs awfully fast, though. She needed three or four seconds between cannon shots at that energy level. Even assuming she hit her target the first two times, it would be hand-to-hand before the blaster was ready for a third shot. These things didn’t look like pushovers in close combat.

  Ollie’s helmet had gone wonky, meanwhile. He could see out of the visor pretty well despite the bug gunk all over it, but the computer wasn’t dealing well with the stuff. It was flashing and firing off all sorts of invalid alarms and notices, and he was having a lot of trouble figuring out what was a real notification and what was a malfunction.

  He flung the helmet off. He lost comms, but they were close enough to shout at each other. Rain soaked his face and clouded his vision, but he didn’t mind. Through the helmet, it all felt a little less real. This was immersive.

  The five bugs at the end of the street had become ten, and they were charging. All the three in front of the station had to do was hold the line until the main assault arrived, and so far nobody was firing a big gun from inside the station. Maybe they were alone.

  “We might as well be,” he said, to himself.

  He spun the dial on the blaster to full. Warning lights flashed all over the place as the pack on his back began to vibrate and the barrel heated up.

  “Oliver!” Minnie shouted. “Put your damn helmet back on and get up here!”

  She fired a kill shot at one bug, but a second was charging her to close the gap. She needed Ollie beside her to take the second shot and he wasn’t there.

  “Hold the position,” he said. Then he took aim, and fired.

  No matter how big a blast shot he took, as long as there were ten targets it wasn’t going to do much good. Oliver wasn’t aiming at any of the bugs, though; he was aiming at the building twenty feet in front of the bugs.

  The kickback from the shot was like nothing he’d experienced before: it knocked him backwards about five feet.

  That was probably why the cannon wasn’t supposed to get dialed that high.

  The pulse lit up the whole intersection as it arced into the glass-and-stone façade of the ground floor bagel shop Oliver sincerely hoped was as unoccupied as it appeared. The aliens up the street hesitated, having not taken into consideration the possibility that the humans had this kind of firepower at their disposal. But when the shot landed and did nothing more than completely destroy the shop, they continued forward.

  Then the whole building started coming down. Two support walls had been atomized at the base, which turned the entire five-story structure into a hail of brick and granite and chunks of cement, which fell into the street between Oliver and the oncoming horde.

  Minnie still needed his help, though, and now his cannon was useless. He turned to see her firing a second shot at the charging alien—and missing. It anticipated, and maneuvered at the last second. She jumped aside as it crashed into the pavement she’d been occupying.

  The battery pack on Oliver’s back was still vibrating, which was a bad sign. If he was wearing his helmet he’d probably be getting all kinds of warning feedback, but he knew what was happening all the same. You never dial a cannon to full.

  He sprinted right at the alien that was about to engage Minnie. She was in the middle of the street, on her back, waiting for the blaster to re-arm, and basically out of time to do anything else but hope that would be happening shortly. The bug had no such timeline to concern itself with, and was up on its hind legs, about to come down on her with two talons.

  “Hey, ugly!” Oliver shouted. He aimed the barrel of the cannon at the alien’s head. It was useless, but the bug didn’t know that. It reoriented on him, and charged.

  By now, he was familiar with the mode of att
ack. The aliens charged, then roared, then closed in for the kill with either those huge pincers or the talons on the ends of their feet. If he had a functioning blaster, he’d take the shot during the creature’s roar. The blaster had fired its last shot, but it wasn’t done being useful.

  When the bug stopped and opened its mouth, Oliver threw the entire weapon, pack and all, into its maw.

  The thing made a quizzical gulping sound and halted its attack for long enough to allow Ollie to get on the other side of it.

  “Time to run,” he said to Minnie, jerking her to her feet.

  “What did you do?”

  He threw her over his shoulder—he’d be getting hell for this later if they survived—and sprinted for the nearest piece of cover: a parked sedan.

  They nearly made it when the pulse cannon that was caught somewhere in the gullet of an alien erupted.

  This had a rather final effect on the bug who swallowed it, as well as to the entire side of the street it was occupying. The explosion manifested as a blinding white light that sucked up all the sound, before releasing it and a tremendous amount of force in all directions. Oliver and Minnie had just negotiated the corner of the sedan when the shock wave carried them both back and through the window of a burrito place.

  Ollie didn’t have his helmet on any more, and this was a really bad time to not have his helmet, but he survived. It may have helped that he had Minnie and her armored torso in between him and the blast when it happened. Or it could have been that he was just really lucky at a good time to be lucky.

  “You all right?” she asked.

  Oliver’s ears had gotten rung pretty good, so she had to get right up into his face to ask the question. He nodded and pointed to the station: they had to go before the aliens recovered.

  He tried standing, but that wasn’t so easy. She had to help him up, and then help him to walk.

  “I’m really dizzy,” he said.

  “Your body knows what to do, just keep walking.”

  They got out of the burrito store to the sidewalk, and headed down the street, with him leaning on her way more than he should have been, but the bugs were gone so it was okay.

  Except for the one still between them and the rendezvous point. The explosion didn’t kill it, any more than it killed Minnie and Oliver, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise to end up still facing him. It was a surprise anyway.

  Minnie threw Oliver to the ground and drew her weapon, but this wasn’t quite fast enough. She was still raising the barrel, and was a half-second away from having her head removed, when a pulse blast from another angle completely destroyed it.

  The shot came from the top of the glass wall of the subway station. A remote-operated cannon barrel extended out of one of the vents.

  “Didn’t I tell you they were gonna end up being bugs?” someone said over a loudspeaker.

  “Wilson?” Minerva said. “You’re a little late, we could have used that gun five minutes ago.”

  “I’m early,” he said. “You guys are the ones who are late. Now are you going to get in here, or do you want to blow up more of the city first?”

  Chapter Ten

  Take the Last Train

  The inside of the Candle Square station was smaller than it looked like it should be from the outside. Most of the triangle structure went to the mechanics of the cooling unit—and, apparently, the large guns—so once Oliver and Minerva made it inside there was little else to do but head down the non-functioning escalators to the first landing.

  If they had decided to go all the way down to the subway platform, it would have meant a much longer journey. The first landing had turnstiles, on the other side of which was a much longer escalator system that led to a second landing, and a ramp to the inbound trains. The outbound trains were on an even lower platform requiring additional ramp access.

  What struck Ollie as soon as they got down to the landing and he had a chance to catch his breath and get his bearings was that the place looked no different than it had any other time he’d been down there. No bunks with soldiers or high tech military gear, no maps of the city with red X’s indicating alien attack points, no provisions, nothing. Just a normal subway terminal in a normal city.

  Also: no people. The city’s emergency preparedness plan for this immediate vicinity included the local citizens taking shelter in the station, because the place was deep enough to offer decent protection in the event of a bombing raid in which standard, non-nuclear bombs were being used. Oliver knew this because everyone knew this, because there was a sign posted at the surface that said more or less exactly this. Yet, the place was empty.

  Maybe the city had different plans in the event of an extraterrestrial assault. Or maybe everyone was down on the lower platform. But he thought if that were so—if there were ten thousand people down there—he’d hear them.

  Minerva helped Oliver—who wasn’t entirely ready to stand on his own—to the ground in a corner against the wall, about ten feet from something that looked like a pool of pee, which just reinforced how normal this subway station was.

  Wilson emerged from the control room door. He was dressed in the same camo outfit as before.

  “Is he all right?” he asked.

  “He’s a little dizzy is all,” Minerva said. “Big blast, no helmet.”

  “I’m fine,” Ollie said.

  “Yeah you are. Saved our asses.”

  She smiled at him and he smiled back. Ollie thought maybe there was something nice there, in her smile, that he wanted to keep for himself. He didn’t really care that her boyfriend was standing a few feet away. Not after what they’d just been through.

  Then again, he was so dizzy he couldn’t stand, so a misinterpretation was possible.

  “Hey, where’s everyone else?” he asked Wilson.

  “Who do you mean?”

  “It’s a rendezvous point. Please tell me you’re not the person we’re here to meet.”

  Wilson looked hurt.

  “You mean, not just me.”

  “Sure, if that makes you feel better.”

  “I’m not the only one here,” Wilson said. “There’s another guy, but he’s down below. Little weird, though, I’m not sure we want to hang out with him.”

  “You mean down at the trains.”

  “That’s what I mean, yes. He seemed to think the only way to get where we’re going is through the tunnels.”

  “Reasonable assumption,” Minerva said. “I wouldn’t go back up there without an army behind me.”

  “Is it really that awful? I didn’t have a good deal of trouble getting here,” Wilson said. “I just headed on over.”

  “No aliens?” Oliver asked. “They’re all over the place, topside.”

  “None that I saw.”

  Oliver looked around the space they were occupying a little more closely from his unfortunate vantage point on the floor. He realized the soot marks he thought he was looking at were blaster marks.

  “I think this place was overrun,” he said. “Must have happened early. What was the problem with the defenses?”

  “The what?” Wilson asked.

  “The big guns that go bang-bang. The thing you fired.”

  “Oh, it was offline. Part of the console was shredded. I had to hotwire a few systems to get it started. Didn’t even know I knew how to do that.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around.”

  Minerva pulled out the map she’d gotten from Ben, seemingly two or three lifetimes ago. “Do you recognize this part of town?” she asked Wilson.

  “Nope. Where’d this come from?”

  “Ben. So it’s important. It’s where we should be heading next.”

  “That’s going to be a challenge if we don’t know what part of town this is.”

  “Hey guys?” Oliver said. “I know at this point this is probably too much to ask for, but could you explain, in a non-crazy-sounding way, what you mean when you say stuff like that?”

  “Like what?”
Minerva asked.

  “Like that the map is important, because it came from Ben, a guy who held us at gunpoint and made us drive around town for no obvious reason. He didn’t even know what the map was for.”

  “You want a non-crazy-sounding explanation?” she repeated.

  “Preferably.”

  “No, I really don’t think we can do that. Can you walk, though? We should get moving. We’ll give you the crazy explanation on the way and you can decide for yourself what to believe.”

  Under normal circumstances, the trip to the inbound platform would have required little effort. One had only to get past the gates using whatever token or pass-card was appropriate, then stand on the escalator and wait for it to make it to the bottom, possibly wondering the entire time why it was still called an escalator when it was taking people down and not up.

  That’s what tended to go through Oliver’s head more or less every time it was appropriate. On a couple of occasions, he shared this observation aloud, but never found someone who thought it as perplexing and/or clever as he did.

  The city appeared to be without power, though, because the turnstiles didn’t work and the escalator wasn’t moving. Ollie wondered if he missed an EMP detonation. That would definitely explain the abandoned cars, but became less likely when he considered that the futuristic soldier gear he and Minerva employed was unaffected. Maybe it was technology that was shielded from electromagnetic pulse attacks.

  Or maybe none of this makes sense and I’m losing my mind, he thought. Let’s just put that out there.

  They didn’t have to jump the turnstiles, because there was a handicapped entrance that didn’t have a gate. But the escalator problem was insoluble. They were going to have to climb down.

  While undeniably better than going up without assistance, down was a little frightening for someone still recovering from what he thought was probably a mild concussion. Dizzy spells and the stairs didn’t go well together.