The DX Chronicles (Book 1): Not Against Flesh and Blood
Page 38
“What now?” David asked as he stepped back and glanced towards the eastern horizon in search of the sun, but found no sign of its drawing.
“Sirens”, Bryen uttered as he looked towards the tree line beside the road. The flashes of emergency lights shined through the shorn foliage and increased in occurrence as a mass of vehicles halted.
“We should head out soon”, Turrisi began as he lifted his rifle and attached it to his back.
“Nah, we’ve got some time”, Erik replied. “If anything, they’ll wait an hour or so in case of secondary explosions. It could be hours before they head towards us, and, if they do come earlier, we could use the smoke to fly off.”
“Yeah”, David replied as he nodded and kicked up a plank of wood. “So…is this it?”
“Is what it?” Nate asked as he sat along the crater and pulled his hood onto his head.
“This”, David replied as he pointed towards the debris, “Was this Arthur Grant’s contingency plan?” he asked as he looked to the group. “Trap us in his house, bomb us, and then detonate both the missile and the planted bombs with the hopes that we’d die?”
“It exterminates us, which he seemed to have wanted”, Shawn began, “and it gets rid of any evidence against him. It was like he knew he’d lose against Erik and planned for it.”
“Or, at least, someone knew he’d lose against me”, Erik replied. “This answers some questions, but asks more.” He reared up and sighed. “But yeah, it seems like this was it; his checkmate, his back-up plan, I guess.”
“Wait”, Bryen called, “This…this is it?”
“Were you expecting something more?” Nate asked as he stood. “I mean, yeah, the password was easy; his computer was probably bait; and getting into the house was too easy as well, but that’s all explained by the whole death-trap theory.”
“Yeah”, Bryen replied as he swallowed, “but_”
“I’m confused too”, Turrisi interrupted, “really confused, and really tired, and my ears won’t stop ringing even though I plugged them. Let’s just get out of here and check in with Lamback and fill him in. He might have more answers, perhaps closure.”
“Sounds good”, David replied as he turned towards the edge of the crater and stepped towards the open but scorched field.
“Wait ‘til the day when you have to tell Clare about the time you survived a five-ton-yield explosion”, Shawn chuckled as he followed David.
“I’d be more worried about your parents finding out, Shawn”, Erik noted as he walked after them.
“Oh, it’ll be a few years before that happens”, Shawn retorted as he spun back.
“Kind of off-topic, but I’m wondering if we should have worn our helmets instead of having left them in Piekarsky’s car”, Turrisi suggested as he jogged after.
“Nah, they’re still not worth it”, Nate replied as he followed.
“I’m assuming we’re using the same flying partners as before?” Shawn asked as they walked towards the tree line opposite the road.
“Yeah, that works”, David replied as he looked over his shoulders. “B, you coming?” he called as Bryen trailed.
“What—yeah”, Bryen replied as he started for the group in an ambling jog. “I’m really tired”, he began as he caught up to them and walked behind Erik. “The kind of tired where you don’t feel like trying to put in the mental effort to sleep but you’re so exhausted that you don’t want to do anything else.”
“I gotcha”, Shawn replied.
“Hey, I have an idea”, David began as he jogged ahead of the group, turned, and walked backwards, “how about we head into Roanoke and see if the hot light is on? The last time we drove through, we were going to confront Arthur Grant, and we had to go in the opposite direction when we came tonight.”
“Fresh Gooey Glaze?” Nate asked, his head slanting, “and who in their right mind would turn it down?”
“Lamback”, Turrisi muttered, “or, at least, he’d turn it down while on duty.”
“I’ll call him and fill him in on our way there”, Erik suggested as he pulled out his phone.
“Sounds like a plan”, Shawn replied, “who knows, maybe we can perk up B-money with some coffee”, he chuckled.
“That should do it”, Bryen replied as they continued.
Their paces quickened as thoughts of nourishment usurped the uncertainty and mortal fear that had once festered among them. We’re done—Five of them would continue with that shared conclusion, while devoid of the knowledge that one carried or perhaps dragged with him, his shoulders rigid and locked as if he were under physical agony from an understanding slightly greater than that of those around him.
Bryen stopped for a moment and looked back to the crater, his fists balling as he recalled that destruction which had come so close to taking their lives but had failed in scathing them. Like we were supposed to survive… He continued behind the group, his arms held by his sides as he scanned the ground. We’re not…he’s not done yet…
***
The stalks of smoke from Arthur Grant’s home which rose high enough to be seen from the edge of Lynchburg went unnoticed in the early morning. The straits and cubes of composite behemoths obscured them as a multitude of skyscrapers jutted from the business district. Below those buildings, the roads sat nigh-vacant. Every few minutes, a vehicle would speed towards the earliest of day-shifts or rush from the completions of nightshifts. There were some pedestrians and some joggers; a few dozen, in all, who were conscious, outdoors, and, in turn, noticing the disturbance which sounded above them and moved across the atmosphere—the indiscernible and phantasmal shape that pushed through the cloud layer and descended in a slant marked only by five contrails. The sound accompanied with those five lines—an even, vociferant churn—rose with each slight decrease in altitude, and that invisible shape, in turn, accelerated, levelling off at just over five hundred feet and moving towards the city’s northern border on an extended, rightward curve.
After a few moments, its altitude decreased, visible by the tremors of glass along buildings as it weaved by those vertical faces, soared above widened pathways, and curved down roads. The volume of its motion, by that point, became earsplitting, with the churn erupting into a strident and omnipresent roar three hundred feet over the ground. The majority of those once sleeping were awakened by the roar. The totality of those who had been awake became alert, stopping and remaining silent as they glanced up to the skies and then saw the flash of polychromic light that erupted and uncloaked the once-concealed.
Lunging from the nexus of that illuminating pulse, exuding that strident roar then hundreds of decibels in volume, and bulleting through the skies with speeds near-blurring was a mechanical shape of vague semblance to jet-propelled craft, but with a chassis more avian in build and covered in overlapping black plates pointing from the body like reptilian scales. It had three tailfins, and, at its forend, a conical, beak-like cockpit which protruded four yards from the body, and two yards in width. Its wingspan totaled just over one hundred feet, while its length from nose to tail was just less than fifty. The wings ended in an arrangement of four, jagged, feather-like prongs, while going down the backs of both wings were three more prongs spaced ten feet apart.
Hanging from under the four prongs nearest to the craft’s body were air-intake engines—the producers of the churn; yet, emanating the greatest amount of force and magnifying the tones of that strange craft was a trinal arrangement of exhaust ports jutting from the tail and bellowing azure-blue flames which provided the speed for that craft as it levelled off in the center of a road and darted for the umber-brown, ten-story structure at the road’s end marked with ‘LYNCHBURG CITY HALL’.
The craft maintained a steady course, moving at two-thirds the speed of sound and tearing across the distance of the mile-length road. Ten seconds before it would have impacted with city hall, two panels, one on the beginnings of each wing, slid ajar in circular gapes. Five seconds before it would have impacted, a trio
of platinum cones was dropped—two from the left wing and one from the right. Three seconds, and those objects extracted fins and points, tightened, and then opened exhaust ports of their own. Two seconds, and those three projectiles blustered down the remainder of that pathway in a spiraling formation, rushed past that invading jet and accelerated while ascending and levelling off at the fifth floor. One second before the obsidian craft would have impacted, its wings, via its interlocking plates, slanted backwards to aim its exhaust groundward and skyrocket the craft. In simultaneity, as the craft cleared the roof, the first of the three rockets gored through the sixth floor and erupted in a concussive and pulverizing burst. A moment after its detonation, the second rocket followed, plunged through that widened gape, and exploded near the center of the floor. A moment after the second, the third rocket followed, plowed through those torrential flames, and erupted near the back of the floor.
All three explosions occurred with such speed that the space between them was infinitesimal and, in turn, indistinguishable for any humans who might have viewed them. The few onlookers perceived only a singular pulse, a stentorious crack, and a radiance moving to fragment, to sever, and to sunder that building. The top half of the building, aflame, tilted and crashed with a tremorous swat, and, as that first plume of ash and smoke blustered along the road, the bottom half, malleated and charred, tilted and followed suit, erupting and launching a second cloud of debris that combined with the first. The damage resounded for tens of miles, sending tremors through the countryside and alerting the masses to calamity.
***
A formation of police cruisers rushed down an empty overpass and thrust deeper into the city’s interior. Those officers searched their radios, called for assistance, and scanned the skies for causes of the destruction and the extent of that destruction; yet it remained unnoticed.
Understanding sped past the formation as a rocket hammered into a skyscraper, three hundred yards to the east, where it erupted and consumed six of the building’s floors. The officers, then fighting the urge to decelerate, examined the skies for the projectile, but looked over their shoulders as the obsidian craft dove from behind them, darted across the road, then curved and rose on an extended about-face for the convoy. The cruisers slowed and stopped as the black shape bolted towards them, and the cruisers spun in the opposite direction and accelerated away as the black shape levelled off one hundred feet over the road, and opened, on the front-undersides of its wings, two corridors from where two six-barreled machine guns hung, while the tips of their sextupled ducts angled towards the vehicles and gyrated in a growling hum.
That hum, within seconds, harshened into a wail as a barrage of high-powered rounds cut slithering and fissuring lines along the pavement, struck the cruisers, and shredded them.
The assault lasted five seconds, before the obsidian jet’s guns slowed their gyrations. It continued over the overpass, rolled to the right, and rocketed for the southwestern edge of that urban sprawl. It moved with swifter and sharper motions then, jolting around buildings and skirting above and alongside of them with such speed that glass panes were shattered. It ascended and then curved, the wings bending upward in quick thrusts and the body angling as it rushed between two rooftops and expelled another rocket.
That rocket sped three streets across from that jet, where it turned towards hundreds rushing from their homes, and, behind them, a trio of fire engines. The rocket dove towards the center vehicle and impacted alongside of it. The blast launched the center engine ten stories skyward, while the rush of flames shattered the remaining two vehicles and launched them in opposite directions. The center truck, then a deflagrating corpse, crashed as the first truck bounced and rolled along the road. The third truck moved on a sideward journey, its burning mass plowing through the glass doors of an apartment building’s lobby and blocking the individuals still running from their homes.
As that second plume rose from the fire engines, the black jet loosed rocket after rocket at skyscrapers, businesses, homes, and roads, and after anything that moved on the ground—the cars of citizens and emergency responders. It zipped and rolled through the metropolis with its guns on continuous fire as it shot at passing buildings and painted streaks along their crystalline surfaces. It then, once more, curved skyward; yet an even hum drove it to fall.
It curved towards the sound and locked onto a news helicopter moving on a distant, parallel trail. The jet sped for the helicopter, and the helicopter rushed into a southbound race. The jet, instead of accelerating, opened fire, its leftward gun setting loose a second-length barrage that speared through the helicopter. The helicopter, after rattling and jerking, erupted in a short flash and then plunged as a burning hail, and the jet, in turn, spiraled towards the center of the city.
***
While cruising ten miles faster than the posted sixty-mile-per-hour speed limit, David’s Ford Escape rushed down the near-empty roads, swerved from the left lane to the right, slowed at the sight of some nearby or distant mountaintop, and decelerated the moments law enforcement vehicles would come into view on the same side of the road, the median, the shoulders, or the direction leading to Roanoke. Yet, the possibility of being caught, and therefore being ticketed, was an afterthought in David’s mind as he flung his head from side to side, thrust forward and backwards, and wailed the words to the pop song exploding from his vehicle’s speakers with almost enough force to overpower his voice and the two accompanying him. Across from him, in the two cup holders between his seat and the passenger seat were two twenty–four-ounce foam cups, once filled with coffee, and, by then, empty.
In the front passenger seat, Erik leaned along the door with his head on his right arm and his katana between his legs. His expression, though fueled with equal amounts of caffeine, was the most placid among those six as he grinned and nodded to the beat of the song. Behind Erik, Turrisi produced the most voluble of discordant cries in an attempt to belt the chorus, his eyes closed and his mouth flapping with each forced enunciation. On the opposite end of the back seat, Shawn turned in hard sways and with eyes closed as he sang with the greatest amount of brio. Held in his left and outstretched across his thighs was a white and green-spotted box, once the container for one-dozen, fresh, glazed donuts; while his right hand was clasped in a tight fist. With every major drumbeat or the end of a line, he’d swing his fist, which, in turn, would swing across and strike the left shoulder of the center-passenger.
Tapped by Shawn and jostled by Turrisi, Nate sat, arms clasped over his knees. Though conscious, he was silent, with that trio of cacophonous singers blasting in his mind with an almost torturous pain. His first instinct—destroy your eardrums. They’ll heal eventually, I think—was, after an instant, superseded by his second—punch the next one that sings off-key—but which, after an instant, was superseded by his third—destroy that God-forsaken radio—but thoughts of physical retaliation impeded his decision-making, while the hundreds of milligrams of caffeine swirled those plans so that his mind could not focus on one. He suffered not alone; instead, one remained with him; one who, beside the group’s six helmets in the very back of the Escape’s trunk, knelt along the back-left window, and, every few moments, smacked his forehead into the pane.
“B-money!” David exclaimed as he glared at Bryen’s banging reflection in the rearview mirror, “I swear, if you break that glass, I am going to throw you to Sharp Top!”
“You can’t sing!” Nate caterwauled with reddening visage.
“At least we’re trying!” Turrisi retorted as he tapped Nate’s shoulder.
“Nate’s just jealous—that’s what it is”, Shawn replied as he shook his head.
“Jealous of the vocal ability to cause brain damage in children and small animals?” Nate asked. “I’m just glad the majority of the human population isn’t as bold as you guys.”
“And what do you know about singing; huh, Klinge!?” David groaned as he looked to the dozens of vehicles speeding towards Roanoke.
“Well, you know what, Klinge”, David began as he looked to the opposite side of the road, and that southerly path overfilled with traffic, “I’d like to see you do better!” he proclaimed as he leaned to look ahead of the curve about a quarter of a mile before them. He found more cars on the opposite lanes, while their side of the road, save for themselves, remained barren. “Put your money where your mouth is!” he exclaimed as he looked above the road, and into the eastern distance, where the Lynchburg cityscape ascended into view. Rising with those skyscraping towers were columns of black smoke; four were discernible from that distance, and they ascended past ten thousand feet before dispersing.
David’s hands tightened over the wheel and his eyes widened. Using his super-reaction, he glanced to his left, scanned the opposite side of the road, and found the number of vehicles moving towards Roanoke increasing still. The opposite traffic, by then, had come to a near-standstill, and that amassment of cars continued beyond view; they weren’t rushing towards Roanoke, they were moving away from Lynchburg. “S***!” he bellowed. His exclamation sounded over the blasting music, and the music was once more usurped as David slammed his foot on the brake and brought his vehicle into a howling deceleration onto the right shoulder. The Escape stopped after one hundred feet of gliding, with a trail of smoke rising behind it and the scent of burned and atomized rubber filling the interior.
David glared at those distant lines of smoke within Lynchburg’s center. He blinked, and, as he did, he saw the flames and the smoke rising from Harrisburg. He opened his eyes and found a more diminished, or, as he thought, a less-advanced destruction. Next to him, Erik followed David’s gaze and found the smoke as he leaned in his seat, while the back passengers glanced to one another.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa there, buddy!” Nate barked, “looks like you haven’t been living what you’re preaching, huh!?” he inquired. “Maybe instead of always complaining about the tiny splinters in other people’s eyes, you should look to the tree trunk_” —Nate stopped as Erik reached back, grabbed him by the shoulder, and dragged him so that he was resting between the front seats. Erik released and then pointed to the top of the windshield, and Nate looked to those same markers of destruction. “Oh s***!” Nate gasped as he reared back.