“Better check the scanner,” Don urged, “been a while.”
Clumsy, Owen dug the bioscanner from his jacket pocket – he’d left his waist belt behind with the rest of their gear - and tapped it on. A bullet clipped a rock at his feet and whined off down the gully, followed by the clap of the shot echoing off the ridge to the north. Owen sprawled face down. The scanner flew from his hand.
“Hell’s leather!” Don dropped to his knees, shouldered a lasrifle and fired up the slope. He only managed to singe the brush close up. “Damn,” he muttered, flattened out and reset the weapon’s power to maximum. He tried to fire again, but nothing happened. He slapped the power button and reinitialized, but the software was slow to react. Damn the cold!
Owen crawled to the other lasrifle lying in the weeds a yard away. "Getting slow. Should have checked sooner,” he berated himself. In one swift motion, he grasped the lasrifle butt, surged to his feet, brought the weapon to his shoulder and fired. A blaze of yellow leaped up the slope. Bellowing until his voice grew hoarse, he splayed the beam along the ridgeline for several seconds, then dropped into what little cover the streambed provided.
“Get the scanner,” Owen barked.
It took Don a heartbeat to locate the device and flip it open. ”Twenty, maybe thirty...hell I don't know. There’s too many.” His voice cracked. Sweat trickled down his sides and his feet no longer accepted the warmth of his boots. His hands shook as adrenaline coursed through his veins, igniting his brain with an anger born of fear.
“On two,” Owen whispered, “we hit the ridgeline and make a run for it.”
“On two.”
“One...two!”
They leaped to their feet and once again yellow beams splayed up the ridge incinerating everything in their path and setting the cap of the ridge ablaze. Smoke billowed from the flames, obscuring a patch fifty yards wide.
“Run!”
Owen hurdled the shallow ditch and pelted up the slope towards a thick copse of nearly leafless poplars. A lead slug tore through his shoulder as Don caught up with him. He cried out and stumbled, but kept on. More shots kicked up dirt around them, the bullets whining off into the distance like so many angry bees.
They reached the copse and Owen faltered, blood dribbling down his chin. He coughed. Blood spewed from his mouth. Another shot slammed into his lasrifle. With a blinding flash, the weapon exploded.
Don screamed his rage as Owen’s mangled body knocked him down. He tossed his weapon aside and grabbed a handful of Owen’s jacket. Surging to his feet, he dragged his maimed comrade into the inadequate cover afforded by trees and brush. More shots rang out. He looked back up the opposing slope and saw furry figures emerging from the smoke. A bullet blasted his boot apart. He fell heavily. Searing pain surged up his leg. A round tore into his chest and slammed him to the ground. He tried to rise, but blessed darkness enveloped him. He pitched forward and lay still.
*****
Doomes nodded to O’Brien without taking his eyespy off the attackers. “Take ‘em out?”
“We no longer have a choice.”
From two silver flyers zipping across the frozen forest just above the treetops, wide yellow beams flickered to life and saturated the far slope. The woodland erupted in flame, consuming everything, including the gunmen closing in on the wounded Slinker crewmen. A third flyer landed gently beside the poplar copse. Four figures in skin-tight black hurried to the bleeding men beneath the trees.
They worked fast, stabilizing injuries. Don was barely breathing; his foot a mangle of torn flesh and splintered bone. Frothy pink blood wheezed from a hole in his chest. Owen lay on his back beside him, his right arm and most of his shoulder obliterated. Radiation burns had blackened his face and uniform. With precious seconds slipping away, Linda Myer-Jeffries set about saving the spark of life that remained.
A second flyer alighted while a third circled overhead. In under two minutes, Owen and Don were triaged and on their way Nayork, oblivious to the presence of their saviors.
Chapter Eleven
22:15 Hours, August 15, 2057 - Earth
Linda caught up to O’Brien as they topped the umpteenth hill since leaving the crash site. Wheezing, she clutched feebly at his arm, giving him and excuse to pause.
“Doomes isn’t doing very well, Colonel.”
“Would it help if we stopped for a while?”
“I think so. None of us look well, you included.” Behind her face shield, her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, her cheeks flushed. Repeated contact with prickly vines and rotting vegetation had scarred and stained her envirosuit. “I’m nauseous and my stomach is cramping. How do you feel, Colonel? How’s the ankle?”
“Not much better than you, I’m sure. That scenic overlook sign was a good half-mile back. I figure we should be close to the turn off. We can rest there.” Not wanting to burden her, O’Brien ignored her last question. “Might be a vehicle we can use.”
“Let’s hope.” She leaned into him and hooked her arm in his.
He forced a half-hearted smile, then grimaced when she couldn’t see his face. They were desperately ill. While the envirosuits did an efficient job of protecting them from the foul air, they did nothing to reduce the affects of the intense radiation. Even the instruments salvaged from the Mars Explorer were so irradiated they no longer worked. Until the meter failed, O’Brien had taken atmospheric readings, but hadn't shared his findings with the others. Radiation was eighteen parts per million and particulate matter so dense at the crash site that the dirty gray pall had concealed anything beyond a hundred meters. The air cleared as they climbed higher into the mountains, such that the bright rectangular beams cast by their litemates reached farther into the night.
"All those mangled guardrails we passed. You know what they’re about, Colonel?"
"Where drivers escaping the bombing lost it, I suppose. Same marks are on the trees."
A distant flash, followed by weak, rumbling tremor, seared the darkness.
Too weak to haul it any farther, he let go the alien weapon he was carrying. It had made a lousy crutch anyway. Most of the gear they brought from the wreck had already been discarded. Gently, he removed Linda’s arm from the crook of his, patted it and took her gloved hand in his. They pushed on in silence. His ragged breath matched hers and he no longer concealed his limp.
He checked his enviro stats, then shut down the display, believing the readings were no longer -accurate. Regardless, their oxy packs would soon be depleted. Once the packs failed, the limited protection afforded by the envirosuits would be gone, reducing their odds of survival to nil.
“You never answered me, Colonel.”
“The ankle is fine. It hurts, but it’s bearable.” He glanced at her, and she at him, and for just a moment they were alone in the dark, but the agony fuming in his fevered limb intruded.
Anger and hatred had flared early on when he concluded that the alien bombardment was worldwide. The image of their blue marble gone dirty gray left him hollow, unable to muster more than the most basic of emotions. He shivered. Did Earth’s neighbors once support vast civilizations that, upon attaining interplanetary travel, were wiped out by these very same beings?
If anyone survived the holocaust, it would be in bunkers or bases deep within the Earth’s crust, such as NAORC, the facility they sought. It was frightening beyond words that they — Linda, Doomes, Tammer, Garson and himself — might be the only survivors of the human race. Lost in thought, O’Brien stumbled and fell.
“What the hell!” Pain lanced his ankle, forcing him to favor his injured limb when he rose. His litemate revealed a woman, middle-aged, on her side, face upturned, eyes and mouth open. Her torn blouse revealed blackened skin pocked with cancerous eruptions and lacerations, as if she had tried to tear off her own skin. Sickened, yet drawn by macabre fascination, O’Brien played the beam over the corpse.
“My God,” Linda gasped and turned away.
Tammer reached them, stepped back and fell to his knees, overc
ome.
“This way. The road splits here.” Sounding cold, even to himself, O’Brien forced himself to look away. He shined his litemate up the narrow lane veering to the right between thin stands of spindly pines. The once neatly trimmed bushes and flower beds had withered to brown clumps. “I think we've reached the overlook. With any luck, there’s a vehicle here.”
Close behind Tammer, leading Doomes’ gravpad, Garson stooped and illuminated the corpse. “She might be a hiker, Colonel.”
“Since when does a hiker wear dress slacks and pumps?” O'Brien regretted the edginess in his voice, but he was too dispirited to apologize.
Garson patted Linda on the shoulder. His litemate flicked after O’Brien, then over Tammer.
Gritting his teeth, O’Brien lurched up the lane, but quickly winded, slowed and waited for the others to catch up. The alien med device had knitted his ankle, but hadn’t eliminated all tissue damage, nor negated the debilitating affects of nuclear radiation. He turned to urge the others on when his envirosuit circulation fluttered, then failed. Moisture accumulated, fuzzing his face shield. The air thickened with carbon dioxide. He detached the helmet and tossed it aside, and sucked in a deep, tremulous breath. Fetid, but breathable.
A dozen steps back, Garson helped Tammer to his feet, then returned to the hovering gravpad. Light strips at the four corners dimly illuminated Doomes, who remained unconscious. Garson nudged the forward tab and the unit slowly followed his lead.
The lane twisted to the left and emptied into a large, paved area. Heading towards where he assumed the overlook walkway to be, O’Brien came across a red, pre-2035 sports car with two dead men inside. Beyond that were the bodies of a woman and two young girls huddled together on the pavement between the car and a blue-striped white ambulance. A dim red light glowed within.
He limped past the bodies and opened the ambulance doors. A dim red overhead lamp revealed emergency medical equipment and two more bodies. A man in a white scrubs propped against the back wall stared vacantly down at a young woman strapped to a stretcher. Dark blue blouse unbuttoned, her white bra contrasted sharply with blackened skin. Tubes plugged into her left arm dangled from an empty IV bag clipped to the wall and defibrillator paddles lay at her side. A pool of dried blood wreathed her head. The stench of death hung heavy in the still air.
“Why on Earth do you think there’s no breeze, Colonel?” Tammer came up beside him, helmet off. A cupped hand over mouth and nose muffled his voice.
“Don't know, but it might be a good thing. The air isn’t as polluted at this elevation.” O’Brien backed away from the ambulance and panned the surrounding area with his litemate. The beam revealed a skimmer, similar to a pickup, and a dark sedan parked parallel to the ambulance nosed up to a polycrete sidewalk and the stone barrier wall beyond. “Doesn’t seem natural, does it?”
“No, Colonel, it doesn’t.”
"These people died from radiation poisoning. The same fate awaits us if we don't get to shelter soon." O'Brien turned back to the ambulance. His head and ankle throbbed with renewed vengeance. “Radiation antidote,” he snapped, and looked around for the others. Linda was checking on Doomes, Garson at the control end of the gravpad.
O'Brien tapped her shoulder and waited while she removed her helmet. “Linda, would an ambulance carry radiation sickness pills?”
“Is that what’s wrong with us...and...and...why all these people are dead? I can't believe I hadn’t figured that out by now.”
“I think so.” O’Brien lowered his litemate. “The question.”
“Uh, it might.” She took a step towards the ambulance, then balked. “I...I...can't...I...”
“Tammer. Help me get those bodies out of there,” O'Brien ordered.
“Most certainly, Colonel.” With unexpected speed, Tammer surged past, grasped the gurney and yanked. It came loose, crashed to the ground and rolled up against the sports car. Hand over mouth and nose, Tammer climbed inside and searched above the rear doors. The interior blossomed with a brilliant white light.
O’Brien jerked away and shielded his eyes, his night vision shot.
Grunting with effort, Tammer grasped the medic by his feet and heaved. Its head hit the ground with a sickening thud before O’Brien could lend a hand. Linda dropped to her knees and gagged.
“Sorry about that, young fella,” Tammer muttered to the corpse as he dragged it aside. “Meant no disrespect.”
Garson patted Linda’s shoulder and moved his lips, but he still had his helmet on and they couldn’t hear him.
Eyes watering, Tammer seemed emotionally unaffected by their gruesome discovery. He stepped away from the ambulance. “All yours, Linda.” At the shadowed edge of the light square spilling from the back, he appeared ghoulish.
Linda took two hesitant steps, stopped, clutched her belly and doubled over. “I...I...can't get past the smell.”
The air was thick with the stench of death. O’Brien screwed up his face in disgust, unable to come to grips with the foul odor of decomposing bodies.
"It's okay, Linda. Take..."
A brilliant flash lit the western sky, momentarily turning night to day. A breeze stirred, stiffened and continued to swell. During the waning days of the Afghan War, O'Brien had witnessed a nuclear explosion from a comparable distance. The icy chill of fear raced through him.
“Everyone in the ambulance! Now! Garson! Get Doomes’ rig in here! Hurry!” He lunged for Linda, grabbed her about the waist and dragged her to the open doors. Fleeting, he wondered at the failure of his biomods to curb his emotional extremes.
Though he still had his helmet on, Garson got the meaning and brought the gravpad forward. Trees leaned east and the gurney with the dead woman rolled a few centimeters. Debris swirled beneath the leeward side of the barrier wall. The gravpad slid smoothly into the ambulance, followed by Garson and O’Brien. Tammer brought up the rear, his great bulk crowded them as he latched onto the doors and yanked them shut.
The howling wind intensified, stripping away pine boughs and hurtling them against the ambulance. With each assault, their sanctuary lurched and rocked. Timber split with a resounding crack. The ambulance shuddered and grated sideways, its polyfiber bottom squalling. The wind quickly approached gale force. They watched in horror as the dead woman and gurney slammed against the rear doors, splintering the glass. For interminable seconds she hung there, revoltingly contorted face flattened against the pane until the storm snatched her away. Wind whistled through the gap between the doors. The red sports car tumbled past. The ambulance continued its slow, grinding skid across the polyphalt.
“It may roll, so everyone hang on!” Drubbed out by the intense cacophony, O’Brien could barely hear himself. A demon possessed, the shrieking wind lifted the ambulance and shook it like a rag doll. Linda and Tammer cried out when it turned into the wind, slammed to the ground and skidded into the woods. Tree trunks scoured its sides. A thick branch punctured the windshield, stopped short by the partition separating them from the cab.
Furiously, the wind tore away the branch and along with it, the windshield. Suddenly exposed, frigid gusts whipped them, dirt struck with the stinging force of needles. Eyes clamped shut, they choked and coughed through clenched teeth. Rocks pelted the cab, rain and sleet, but then the temperature soared and a heated blizzard whirled through their refuge.
With unexpected suddenness the windstorm passed, though a warm drizzle continued to patter on the roof. Tammer let loose a great sigh and took his arms from about Linda. A second flash, farther away, flared and receded. Surprisingly, the interior lamp had stayed on, a bright blip in the near total darkness.
“Everyone okay? Anyone injured?” O’Brien noted their exposed skin had reddened further.
“A man can't sleep with all this partying going on.” Weak and strained, something of the old Doomes came through the tinny external com.
“Doomes!” On her knees, Linda leaned over and hugged him. “You’re awake! God, we were so worried abou
t you.”
“Gentlemen...and lady, I think this is a good omen.” Tammer faced O’Brien. “Now, Colonel, how do we get the hell out of here?”
“There’s a cargo-hauler up the parking lot,” Garson ventured, his helmet nowhere in sight.
“Good, good. Go check it out.”
“On my way, Colonel.” Garson reached past Tammer and pulled on the internal release. The back doors didn’t open, so Tammer leaned into them. One gave way with a crack like a pistol shot. With a swift kick, he dislodged the other and squeezed aside to allow Garson to pass. The ambulance’s interior illumination spilled into the darkness.
The wind had lessened to a warm and wet westerly breeze. It cleared the air of fine particulates, though the night remained as densely black as before. Garson jumped to the ground and jogged away, the beam from his litemate dancing across the polyphalt.
Tammer eased himself to the ground and played his litemate about. All of the vehicles within sight were lodged in the trees. The red sports car stood on end. A green sedan was overturned, and an older model hauler partially buried among bent and shattered pines. The bodies had disappeared and thankfully, so had the stench of decaying flesh. The air was fresh, rejuvenated. The rain began to cool.
“Okay, Linda, take a look around for anything useful.” O’Brien gave her a reassuring smile, though far from optimistic about their odds for survival.
“Sure, Colonel.” Though her voice quivered, she appeared to be clear headed. She set about her task, pulling out drawers and shuffling purposely through their contents.
The warning lamp on the gravpad blinked, catching O'Brien's attention. Realizing what it meant, he quickly removed Doomes’ helmet. “How you feeling, Sergeant? Didn’t mean to suffocate you.”
“Half dead, Colonel.” Doomes’ lopsided grin assured O’Brien that he’d reacted quickly enough. “Where are we?”
“Earth, Sergeant. We crash landed a few hours ago.”
“How...”
“Long story. We’re heading for an underground research facility in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon.”
Mankind's Worst Fear Page 29