The Day of the Nefilim

by David L. Major

  “I always wanted to come here,” said Reina as she watched the flames and the crowds on the streets. It reminded her of a medieval painting of hell she had seen once.

  Thead was beside her. “Well, you’ve finally made it then, haven’t you.”

  At the controls, Nibat turned to Bark.

  ‘They’re coming again, only two of them now, and too fast for us to outrun them. The Stream may be more stable, but it can’t give us the speed that the Nefilim grid provides when it is strong. We may be able to lose them lower down. The smoke from the fires might confuse their ships.’

  “Then let’s do it,” said Bark, who had no better idea. They swept downwards and disappeared into the black smoke.

  The two fliers behind them followed, the Vice-Secretaries howling with joy now that their prey was in their sights. Their soldiers sat ashen-faced behind them, gripping the edges of their seats.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, back in Yucatan

  THE FLIER appeared suddenly over the village.

  It should have been easy for them, but the ship on the ground had been warned from somewhere above Mexico City, and it was ready. The instant the UN flier appeared, firing randomly among the houses, it flew into a gaping hole in the grid that had been carved out by the flier on the ground. The UN flier fell like an animal tumbling into a trap, and was only a few feet from the ground when it was met by a barrage of rays.

  Before its pilot could do anything, the ship’s hull began to shimmer like a mirage. Its weapons fired haphazardly, into the town, into the jungle, and up into the sky. The glow increased, swallowing the entire ship, and it became incandescent, so bright that it was hard to look at.

  By the time it exploded in a shower of white sparks that rained down over the village like a light fall of snow, its occupants had ceased to exist. Their molecules had twisted in on themselves, each one falling into a tiny black hole of its own, winking out of existence like a collapsing star.

  The villagers gazed up in wonder at the falling white flakes. Steve and Sarah looked at each other, each knowing what the other was thinking. The alien ship had saved them again. They felt blessed, in a way that their visitors would never have understood. There would be a puja tonight. Some buildings were burning; they hurried to put out the fires.

  * * *

  The battle for Mexico City

  “SHIT!” Alexis Gore watched the screen in front of her as the dot of light that represented their third flier winked out. She settled back in her seat, her brow furrowed and her eyes dark. “Never mind. We’ll get back to those pissants later.”

  The initial thrill of the chase had worn off. The sky above the city was a mess of smoke and heat and radiation from destroyed nuclear facilities, making it impossible to track either the beacon implanted under Thead’s skin or the ship itself.

  “Have you seen them?” The radio was crackling, breaking up from the interference. It was her brother. He was flying around in circles high above, in case the fugitives made a break for it.

  “No!” she shouted. “I have not!”

  No sooner had she said it than a break appeared in the smoke ahead of her. The troublemakers were flying slowly above a wide plaza littered with bodies and wrecked vehicles.

  “We’ve got them!” Alexis called to her brother. “Get down here!”

  She took the controls from the pilot and put the flier into a manic descent. It fell like a stone out of the sky towards the other ship.

  * * *

  By the time Nibat realized what was happening, it was too late. A cloak of glowing mist shot from Alexis’s ship and enveloped them. The ship tried to accelerate, but it was held firmly in the force field. It bucked and strained, and then hovered, motionless, held like a pinned insect.

  They started to sink towards the ground.

  “Can we shake this thing?” A violet light flickered madly outside the viewports.

  ‘If we had enough velocity when it was applied, yes, but we were traveling too slowly. It has us.’

  “Weapons?”

  ‘No. Nothing. This is a stasis field.’

  The ship settled noisily onto the gravel surface of a road.

  A short distance away, Alexis had already landed. Her soldiers were on the ground in seconds. The Vice-Secretary herself followed, smiling, her mood greatly improved. “Come on, you naughty, naughty people. Let’s have a look at you. You’ve caused so much trouble!”

  Inside the ship, Reina and Bark were beginning to regret that they had ever become involved in this war, or whatever it was. This is what we get for sticking our noses into someone else’s fight, thought Bark.

  “We’re not going down without a fight,” Geoca said. “Let’s arm ourselves.”

  “Yes, yes!” Pig shook his head from side to side, his tusks carving the air.

  “Oh, but you are going down without a fight,” said a voice behind them. Everyone turned.

  Thead had picked up one of the Nefilim weapons and was aiming it at them. A dark smile curved his lips.

  Reina clenched her fists. “You piece of shit. I should have fragged you ages ago!”

  Thead laughed. “Well, you might well think that, and you might well be right, but where you’re going, I don’t think you’ll be getting any more chances.” He pointed the gun at Nibat. “Now open the door, Nefilim, and we’ll go and say hello to my friends.”

  Nibat thought something that took the smile off Thead’s face for a few seconds.

  Alexis stood waiting outside. She watched as Thead followed the others out, and smirked. He was a good boy. These fools should never have trusted him. She certainly wouldn’t have.

  “Stop there,” she said when they were on the ground. “We’ll just wait until my darling brother gets here. On your knees, all of you.”

  They knelt down.

  “Thead, check them for weapons.” She looked upwards for any sign of her brother while Thead did as he was told.

  “Nothing in your pockets, dear?” Thead said as he leaned over Reina.

  “Fuck you, jerk,” she hissed as he ran his hands over her breasts. He moved on to Geoca and reached down and snatched up one of the little Geocas from where they had been cowering in his torso.

  “You little rats irritate me, did you know that? And do you know what I do to things that irritate me?” He held the squealing creature at arm’s length and put the muzzle of his gun up against its head. “Frag, I think is the word they use here.”

  “Thead!” barked Alexis. “Stop that! The little prick might be useful! You can do what you want to it later!”

  Thead threw the creature onto the ground in front of Geoca. “Later, maggot. I know where to find you.”

  Pig was sitting quietly on his haunches, his eyes closed. He tried to contact the ship, casting around for the telltale signs of its consciousness, but there was nothing. The field was still holding it. But there was something. He could feel it, faint and in the distance. It was the unmistakable presence of another ship. It was calling, looking for contact. It came to him more as an impression than anything definite, but once he knew it was there and he focused on it, it became a small but clear voice in a silent part of his mind. It was the flier, back at the village.

  ‘Where are you? WHERE ARE YOU? I can’t feel your ship any more…’

  Pig told it what had happened.

  ‘Then you are in trouble.’

  ‘Big, serious trouble,’ thought Pig. ‘I fear that we are about to die.’

  There was a pause, then: ‘Death is not that bad.’

  ‘Whatever. That’s easy for you to say, but it’s not what we need to hear right now. We’re surrounded by soldiers commanded by a mad woman, and there’s more trouble approaching.’

  Many miles away in the village, the flier thought and calculated more quickly than it had ever done before. The lights on its control panel went out and the air around it became cold as it pulled all of its energy into a small tight core.

  Pig felt the ship sli
p away. It was gone for two or three seconds, and then it was back.

  ‘I can see what is happening around you. This is all I can do, but there is danger. Working with the Stream is new to me. Good luck, friend Pig!’

  Immediately after the ship had finished, the ground began to shake. Pig’s eyes snapped open. The sky above them twisted as though it was being wrung into a ball. The smoke from the burning city was carried along, like trails of dye swirling in water.

  A central point formed, and the trails gathered together into a vortex. The Gore brother’s flier rode one of the arms of the spiral, caught up in the Stream, swaying from side to side like a leaf buffeted on a churning river.

  Pig could only guess what was happening. The flier in the village was somehow manipulating the Nefilim grid. It was forcing a section of the grid into a smaller area, winding it up like a spring, tighter and tighter. The ground continued to shake, protesting at the forces that were being dragged out of it.

  Everyone forgot what they were involved in and stood looking up at what the sky had become. There was a sudden loud crack that seemed to come from everywhere. In that instant, the spring unwound and the center of the vortex shot towards the earth like a thunderbolt sent by an angry god. Where it struck, the earth convulsed like an animal being electrocuted, rearing up with a great tearing sound. Buildings collapsed and were thrown aside like toys.

  A trench appeared in the road near Alexis’s flier. Its landing gear collapsed and it fell onto the ground, where it rocked like an unbalanced top, its hull cracking and bending.

  The trench grew, a gaping mouth opening onto the depths. Sparks leapt back and forth between the surfaces of fractured rock. A couple of soldiers standing near the edge disappeared into the chasm without a sound.

  Another section of the earth suddenly tilted upwards. Alexis had been standing on it. She was thrown forward, scrambling madly as she slid towards the pit. For an instant it seemed as though she had found something to hold on to near the lip of the crevice, but the earth twitched, almost as though it was aware of her, and she was thrown screaming into the void.

  Theo’s pilot was good. He kept things together as his ship was thrown around by the tightening spring of the vortex, and it was only when the trap was released that he lost control. The flier slid sideways, thrown aside by the bolt of power that sped downwards. As the earth below opened up, the ship spun out of control in a wild corkscrew motion. The pilot was just beginning to regain some control when the flier hit the ground and skidded along, losing parts of itself as it went. The ship came to rest on the edge of the crevice, in front of the sister’s wrecked craft. It balanced precariously, on the verge of tipping over into space. The door, which was on the safe side of the vessel, opened, and figures spilled out onto the ground.

  When it had started, Bark and the others had stood still at first, not sure what was happening. But then Pig had yelled “This is for our benefit! Let’s move!”, and they had come to their senses.

  Thead tried to maintain his balance, and fired at Pig and Bark as they ran towards the ship. The blast burned a glowing scar on the ground in front of them. They changed direction, and ran towards the burned-out shell of a nearby building. Thead turned and was about to fire at the blue woman when he was hit. He pitched forward onto the ground, his back smoldering, and didn’t move.

  Sahrin was standing in the doorway of their flier. She slumped heavily against the bulkhead and lowered her weapon. “This way,” she tried to call, but she was weak, and her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. The others had seen, though, and came running.

  Their ship was conscious again. With the damage to Alexis’s flier, the stasis field had disappeared, and it was preparing to fly.

  Someone was still firing at them. Sahrin peered, her vision blurred with perspiration that stung her eyes. She felt like crap. It was one of the soldiers near the other craft. She tried to fire, but what little strength she had was ebbing. As the blue woman came up the steps, Sahrin fell forward into her arms.

  Pig and Bark were the last ones in. As the door closed behind them and they took off, the Gore sister’s ship started firing. Sparks flew from the ship’s hull as it rearranged itself against the attack, the ship’s mind rushing to the areas that were hit and doing its best to hold the damage as soon as it happened.

  As they took off, the earth stopped heaving. Slowly, it groaned its way back into place, leaving only the gaping hole in the ground as evidence of what had happened.

  ‘Where now?’ Nibat asked. ‘There is some damage that needs to be attended to.’

  Bark ran his hand across his brow. “Where now? Away from here, for a start. They will have help coming.”

  ‘Then we can do without being around to meet them.’

  “Exactly.”

  “There is a node in the Stream near here, on the outskirts of the city,” said the blue woman. “The ship could repair itself in flight, but it could be done more quickly if we were at the node. It would save us time in the long run.”

  “Whatever you say,” replied Bark. “Let’s do it.”

  They changed direction and followed the banks of a new river that flowed through the ruins of the city.

  * * *

  Theo Gore lay sprawled face down on the ground. There was dust in his mouth and eyes. As he struggled back to consciousness, the sound of confusion and voices came back to him in fits and starts as the veil of darkness fell away.

  He struggled to his knees. Around him, his soldiers were doing the same. He spoke into the band on his wrist. “Alexis! Where are you?”

  Silence.

  “Alexis!” He looked across at her flier. It sat like a discarded broken toy, surrounded by rubble.

  There was some static, and then he heard a small voice coming from his wrist.

  “Get me off here, fuck it!” It was her, alright.

  “Ah! Alexis, where are you? Are you in your ship?”

  “Cut the shit! I’m stuck down here! Get me out!”

  “Stuck where? Down where?”

  “Down here! Down the fucking hole, idiot!”

  “Settle down, sister.” He walked to the edge of the pit and looked over the edge. It gave him vertigo, looking into blackness that seemed to go down forever. She was there, sitting on a narrow ledge protruding from the rock face forty or fifty feet down.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No. Well, my foot. I suppose I’ve hurt my foot.”

  “Mmm. Can you walk?”

  There was a pause, and then in measured, even tones, her voice heavy with sarcasm: “You... dumb... fuck... I don’t know, do I, because there’s nowhere to walk down here, is there? Just skip the medical profile and…”

  “Yes, sister, yes…” He turned to one of his soldiers.

  A few minutes later, the Vice-Secretary was dangling from a line and clinging to a harness designed for a Nefilim. By the time she was being pulled up over the edge of the precipice, her brother’s attention was elsewhere.

  “Well, thank you for the lovely welcome,” she grumbled, brushing herself off.

  “Look,” said Theo, without looking at her.

  She looked. A crowd was approaching. It was a large crowd; there were hundreds, maybe thousands. It was hard to tell, and no one was going to count.

  He didn’t know it, but Theo Gore had been recognized by the younger brother of a Mexican resistance fighter. The boy had seen the Vice-Secretary’s picture on the wall of his brother’s room, alongside the pictures of various presidents, industrialists, Central American dictators and other enemies of the people.

  The boy ran to a meeting that was going on in the car park of a burned out supermarket, and whispered in his brother’s ear as he sat with the rest of the District Committee of the Revolutionary Council. The Committee immediately deferred its plans for the re-establishment of order in the city, and decided instead to greet the Vice-Secretary.

  Gore was infamous in Mexico, even more than he might have expected.
He had made his name during the uprising that had begun in Chiapas and Oaxaca a few years before, when the people of those areas had risen up yet again against the multinational corporations and their sympathizers in the government. The government, its own forces divided by the revolt, had called on the United Nations for help.

  It was given, of course. Tens of thousands of blue-helmeted soldiers were sent from all over the world to contain the uprising, which had quickly spread all over the country. The UN gave itself a mandate to make Mexico safe for democracy.

  The UN peacekeepers were led by a young and enthusiastic Gore, eager to prove himself in his first major command. He tore the place apart. His forces descended on the population like a plague of insatiable locusts. The slaughter was terrible, and it went on for weeks. Prisoners were taken by the thousands, and few were ever seen again.

  The people’s army fought back, but they were standing up against the military might of the world’s richest nations, and they didn’t have a chance. By the time all opposition had been crushed and a brooding, resentful order had been restored, Gore had earned himself a place at the top of the local pantheon of hate and fear.

  In the years that followed, the locals would remember Vice-Secretary Gore whenever they passed the stadiums that had been used for the executions, or the landfill sites that had become mass graves.

  The crowd saw that it was indeed Gore. A roar went up and they began to run, pausing only to pick up rocks or anything else that could serve as a weapon.

  The Gores looked at the scene in disbelief. Why would peasants dare confront them like this? They snapped out of their inaction as the first rock thudded to the ground a few feet in front of them.

  “Don’t just stand there, you idiots! Open fire!” The soldiers started firing deadly pale rays into the crowd, cutting swathes of powdery disintegration through it.