by Mark Wandrey
In no time, huge parts of the city were ablaze as the opposing helicopter forces tore into each other. The original forces were more numerous but the newly arrived units used surprise and superior weapons to the best advantage. As the sun climbed above the horizon, the new forces took the victory. Next the battle moved to the ground.
From the city command center deep under the island, Hipstitch smoked one of his obnoxious Cuban cigars and watched the battle progress. “Excellent!” he roared as the last of the attacking choppers began to retreat back over the Hudson River. “That pussy Alexander and his men were always a pushover in Op Force games!”
“General, forces are landing on Long Island.”
“What?”
“We have nine O’Neil class submersible assault vehicles detected by satellite putting forces aground less than fifty miles from Manhattan.”
“Don’t just sit there boy, give me the numbers!” Military symbols danced across the computer screens. “Typical loads?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hipstitch worked the information in his mind, eyes narrowing and smoke curling from the cigar. “Not good. Can we mount resistance before they get ashore?”
“The three reserve Super Cobra companies in the Bronx can be there in fifteen minutes, sir.”
“Those O’Neil boats have quad-mounted phalanx cannon; they would chew those birds into bloody pieces. Order the One-oh-nine to deploy rocket artillery along the East River. Also, let’s get to work on the northern defense…” He moved defenses with his aides for an hour, getting ready to defend Manhattan. He was so busy managing the coming battles that he failed to notice things had begun to happen in the warehouses holding all the equipment for the Portal Project. Or that the building full of scientists and technicians who labored to bring the project to completion was now empty. The soldiers guarding them fled as the bombardment began.
All across the nation, the last vestiges of civilization burst into flame and shriveled to nothing. The major cities soon were vast firestorms and the countryside was ravaged by millions of refugees looking for food, shelter, or just carnage. Till just before dawn the eastern sky was dominated by a star bright enough to outshine the moon. All but the innocent, young, and the confused elderly knew it was the Angel of Death, now only a quarter million miles away. As the sun rose over the Pacific Ocean, Lebowski hurtled toward Earth and past the moon.
The final remnants of power in Washington fought on two fronts. The first was a desperate assault on New York City to wrest control of the Portal from rebel elements of its own military. The second was in space where the remnants of Space Command and NASA took on the instrument of their destruction. As the asteroid fell past the moon, all satellites watched it with intense interest. The position and velocity was calculated to the tenth decimal place. Then the final battle began.
From all over the world, every nation with the means sent its nuclear arsenal into space. A thousand fireflies climbed into the sky as stunned men and women turned frightened eyes to watch them climb on columns of flame. In command centers, they watched with baited breath as the missiles left the atmosphere and spent the last of their fuel to climb out of orbit and on toward the moon. A few missiles, those sent by the less advanced nations, never made it out of orbit. A few fell back to Earth and burned up, others stalled in orbit, and tragically one made reentry and detonated over northern Africa. There wasn’t enough civilization left on the continent to be outraged or frightened.
The final attack against LM-245 was desperate and uncoordinated. Most of the weapons were impact fused bombs with no way to control them once launched. The stress was too much for some and they detonated prematurely, destroying hundreds of others. Still more flew off in wild directions. For decades to come random nuclear blasts would pop up all over the Sol system as warheads drifted into asteroids and planets. But a surprising number managed to reach their target, or almost reach it.
One by one the coasting nuclear missiles that could relay signals back to Earth winked off the scope. The commanders of the missile bases screamed out for answers and eventually orbital telescopes captured images of what was happening in space. As the missiles approached their target, there would be a tiny flash of light, and then it was gone. The missile attack lasted for two hours. Not a single warhead exploded closer than a thousand miles before its target. Those on Earth with clear skies watched the surface of the moon as it was peppered with nuclear detonations while Lebowski continued to bore down on them.
In his New York bunker, General Hipstitch read the final report as he watched symbols being updated on his status board. The battle on Long Island was going much better than the one in space. The asteroid was coming, and nothing would stop that now.
It was medieval warfare, nothing more. Lt Col. Dan Wilson wiped sweat from his brow and watched as his men returned behind the palisade to rest. Nineteen hours of combat and he was finally seeing some progress. The Komodo sloths were getting the hint and many had moved off. Their solution to the rampaging lizards was simple but elegant. They constructed a pair of turtle-like tanks from their small stash of sheet metal. Around that they placed two inch poles sharpened to a point facing outwards in all directions. Four men under each one squatted and moved it outside the defenses of the palisade. A crazy plan, but a bold one, and it was working.
The first time they’d nearly been crushed as a dozen of the lumbering six-legged beasts threw themselves at the turtles. The monsters all died, speared through dozens of times. As the other sloths feasted on the dead, the men had retreated with their turtle, replaced the broken spears, and came out again. More than a hundred dead sloths littered the ground outside the palisade and the ground was awash in blood, making footing treacherous. Wilson was forced to admit the plan worked. Unfortunately, it was that nerd Gibson’s idea.
“Not many left now!” one of his men yelled after he had gotten out of the turtle. Like the rest of them he was bloody from multiple cuts and covered in dried mud. The team was all smiles now.
“Take them out one more time, get a couple more, then we’ll mop them up with the guns.” They all cheered at the news. “Now, I know you men are dead on your feet, but if we don’t do something about them getting up here it’s all going to happen again. So, as soon as we have them cleared off the plateau we’re heading for that path and are going to build a wall.”
There were a few moans and curses, nothing worse than that. “Where are the people who are supposed to be coming through that thing?” asked a soldier who pointed at the Portal.
“I don’t know, but if my watch is right the Earth is going to get creamed in fifteen hours. For some reason, they are cutting it to the wire. In a few hours we’re either on our own, or we’re going to have more than a hundred guests. We cannot have Komodo sloths crawling around at unknown intervals with a hundred green civilians at risk. All we’ll end up with is a bunch of well-fed sloths.” There were laughs from his men but he could also see Gibson looking at him from his commandeered cabin where he was carefully incubating his sloth eggs.
“It seems like a lot of work but it’s worth it,” Amanda Broadmoore said from where she was getting ready to go out with the next team. Two men had been injured on the first turtle missions and she had stepped up to help, thereby guaranteeing the men’s respect. “It won’t take a wall like this. Just a few dozen sharpened poles aiming down the path should do it.”
“How is that going to stop one of those?” someone asked and pointed over the wall to where a huge sloth was ripping massive pieces of flesh from a carcass.
“According to Gibson, the path is narrow and they can only come up one at a time. All we have to do is bunch them up and their own natural aggression will do the rest. We just have to be sure to reinforce it from time to time. It should hold indefinitely.” That seemed to be enough and the men all went back to work.
With a few minutes to himself, Wilson walked toward his own tiny cabin to take a short nap before the last effort. Gibson interc
epted him before he got there.
“Got a minute, Colonel?”
Wilson looked past the scientist to his cabin and the lumpy but inviting cot. “Sure,” he said reluctantly and followed the man back to his ‘lab’. “What do you need?”
“I thought you would want to see this.” Gibson led them inside.
“I’ve seen the monstrosity you are attempting to hatch, son. While I don’t agree with what you’re doing, I will acknowledge the expediency of it, at least for scientific purposes.”
“That’s a real progressive thought for you, Colonel, but I didn’t bring you in here to see Junior.” He led the Colonel to the back of the cabin where a table was covered in parts of dead lizards.
“This is appetizing.”
“It’s just more research. These lizards are interesting creatures. I still see the hand of science here, not God.” Gibson had forwarded the theory several times that he believed all the life forms on Bellatrix had been designed, not evolved like on Earth. “No, what interested me more was this.” He reached out and flipped over a piece of meat to show Wilson a squirming mass of white maggots.
“Disgusting, yes. Unique, no.”
“On Earth maybe, but on Bellatrix there is no native insect life.” Wilson looked at him and cocked his head. Just then a fly landed on Wilson’s hand and he looked down at it in surprise. “Stowaways, more than likely,” Gibson explained and picked up a half dozen vials full of amber-colored liquid to show him. Inside each one was a different bug. “I’ve found seven different species of Earth insect living happily here now.” Suddenly he jumped to the ground and scurried on hands and knees under a table.
“Are you losing you mind?” Wilson demanded.
“No, but I just found number eight.” He stood up and held up a squirming cockroach between his fingers.
“Great, we could have left that one behind.”
“As the greatest survivor in history, it’s unreasonable to think it wouldn’t make the trip along with us.”
“But how did they get here?”
“Oh, in our food, in the boxes, sneaking through the Portal as we came through, who knows?”
“What’s this going to do to the world’s ecology?”
“Play hell with it, I’m sure. But there’s nothing we can do about it. The people who will come over later will bring hundreds more species of insects, and thousands of bacteria and virus’. God only knows how many will survive, and thrive. It’s a brave new world for the bugs, too.”
Wilson watched as the scientist stuck the struggling cockroach into a vial and added formaldehyde then watched as it ended its struggling in the preserving fluid. He pointed at the incubator. “What are you going to do with that thing when it hatches?”
Gibson looked over at the egg nearby on its improvised incubator, moving over to adjust the heat pack that kept it at the perfect temperature. “What else but domesticate them!” he said with a laugh in his voice.
Mindy moved from building to building as quickly and quietly as she could. Even in the best of times she’d heard that New York City was never a safe place, but not as if it was a killing field. Everywhere she looked there were smoldering cars and burning buildings. As she came out from behind a hundred-year-old brownstone apartment, she almost tripped and looked down at the corpse of a girl no more than ten, her face a bloody mess. She moved on quickly and tried to banish the quick image. The little girl’s dirty panties pulled around her knees. She’d seen dozens of bodies in the few blocks since leaving Central Park behind. Some more dead than others.
Ragged gunfire tore into the street just behind her as she ran across the open alleyway. Mindy screamed and dove through a missing window. Whoever had fired at her found something else to occupy their time and no more bullets came in her direction. She waited for several minutes, her heart racing, before poking her head up and looking around. There were distant screams and more shots, but none nearby. “Only another two blocks,” she said in a shaking voice and crept out of hiding.
The distant crumbling whump of huge explosions was getting closer by the moment. She had no idea what was happening but it couldn’t be good. She ran quickly to the next street. She was running so fast she didn’t see the group of young men until she ran right into one of them.
“Well, what do we have here?” said the biggest of them.
“I’m just trying to get somewhere,” she said and backed up.
“Oh, you got somewhere!” he said and pointed. Before she had time to scream, the two others grabbed her and started dragging her into the nearest ruined store front.
“I don’t want any trouble!” she yelled and tried to get away from them but they were a lot stronger than her and she felt herself being dragged inside. “What are you doing!” she screamed as they pushed her down on the filthy floor.
“Shut up, bitch,” one of them said and casually backhanded her across the face.
Mindy sat up on the floor and wiped blood from a split lip. She struggled against the rising panic she felt. There was a way out of any situation. “I have powerful friends, if you just let me go…”
“Oh, we’ll let you go,” the leader said and dropped his pants, exposing his huge erect and pierced penis, “we’ll let you go wild on my thing!” They all laughed and she screamed loud and long. The other two grabbed her and held her down as the leader knelt and forced her legs apart. Mindy kicked and screamed as he tore her pants off then her panties.
“You d-don’t want to do this!” she pleaded as he shoved his way in between her legs and positioned his throbbing organ.
“Oh, yes I do,” he said with a wild look and moved to ram himself into her. The blast of a gun at close range almost deafened her. The man who was about to rape her looked down at the bright blood pumping from his chest. He gave a gurgling cough and fell backwards.
“Oh no, you don’t,” said a familiar voice.
“Billy!” Mindy cried. The other two let her go and ran. Billy shot them both down without a second’s hesitation.
“Oh, my god!” Mindy said as the last one hit the ground. “You’re a police officer!”
“Today, I’m a survivor,” he said and looked back at her. He gestured with his gun to the dying thugs. “You’re a survivor too. Would you rather I didn’t come looking for you?”
“N-no, of course not.”
“Then let’s get moving, and stay close.”
Mindy followed because she had to, and because she was too stunned to speak. After a block, she got her voice back. “Is that the first time you killed someone?”
“No,” he said and they moved on in silence. They paused next to a smoldering florist shop and he spoke again. “Eight years on the force and never pulled the trigger once except at the range. Couple weeks ago when we met, remember that day? The Followers of the Avatar were attacking Central Park to get to the Portal and I was unlucky enough to show up and get into that mess. It was like a war, that day. I don’t know how many people I killed, and I don’t want to think about it.” He looked at her, then back the way they had come. “I guess it gets easier with practice.”
“I hope I never find out.”
“Me, too.”
“They weren’t going to let me go after they were done raping me, were they?” he shook his head. “It was just so sudden, so brutal. One minute they were alive…” Mindy doubled over and vomited on the filthy sidewalk.
“The next they were dead. And so will several billion more in a few hours, so let’s get a move on.”
“Agreed, let’s go.” She wiped her face on her shirtsleeve and followed him. A block away they reached their objective, a now abandoned New York City library annex. The streets for half a block were strewn with millions of pages from books that had been looted and destroyed. “Why do they always destroy the libraries?” she wondered aloud.
“Fear,” was all he could think of. It made as much sense as anything else. Inside, it appeared abandoned until they were off the street then she could se
e several red laser dots appear on her husband’s chest. She gasped and looked down to see more of them lazily swimming across her body as well.
“Billy,” she whispered.
“It’s okay,” he said and holstered his gun. “It’s me!” he yelled and the lasers vanished.
“You found her then, lieutenant?” said a cop dressed in black tactical vest and helmet as he stood up from behind an overturned bookshelf. He held a nasty looking machine gun with the casualness of a professional killer.
“Sure did,” he said without elaborating. “How many we have here?”
People started coming out from the back rooms of the annex building and Mindy cried with relief. She began to recognize her friends and co-conspirators. But there were far fewer than she was expecting. “Is this all that made it?” She asked one of her friends.
“Yes. We split up after leaving the apartments. I think some were attacked or killed on the way here. It’s hell on Earth out there!” Mindy took a head count and found thirty-five men and forty-four women.
“I sent out notices of what I wanted to do to a hundred people and only seventy-nine made it?”
“Afraid so,” another of her friends said. She was surprised to see some of them held guns. No doubt this was the reason these people made it while others hadn’t. So much for gun control in the Big Apple.
“Just as well, Mindy,” Billy said from where he was talking to one of the dozen cops. “I had to make some deals to get help.”
“What kind of deals?”
Billy said something to the other cop who went into a side room and returned with a new group. These were women and children, and it only took Mindy a minute to realize they were the families of the dozen police officers gathered there. Mindy did another head count. Twelve officers, twelve wives, fifteen kids, Billy and herself added up to one hundred and twenty. “We can make this work,” she said with a smile. “The Portal had one hundred and thirty left last time I checked. And since it’s screwed up there’s no chance any more have gone across.”