by Ric Dawson
Julie’s hysterical screams kept time with the shrieking winds. Robert ran for the jagged opening, only to be dragged down by another tentacle and pulled into the white maelstrom. Red rain pelted the ground moments later.
I stopped shooting and willed more power from the dragon medallion. The shield steadied back to energetic violet.
“Kane, don’t shoot at the creature, bullets won’t hurt it!” I yelled over the thunderous din of the raging conflict.
The parka-clad troops outside combined fire with the creature’s attacks. Bullets thudded into the walls around me as chunks of wood and plaster board rained down.
Damn. The weakened shield allowed bullets to penetrate. I felt slight stings on my arms and legs.
What the hell. Evil bugs too?
We had to pull back. I steadied myself with my right hand on the wall and inched down the hallway towards the back room. The wall was slick. Glancing at my right hand, I saw red blood covered it. Dazed. Whose? A steady flow of crimson ran over my hand.
Damn. My blood.
Kane limped and a red trail followed on the floor near him. His face contorted in a grim mask. The M4A1 blazed a staccato of controlled bursts, only stopping as he slipped another magazine into the weapon. We made it back into the room with the large conference table, now splintered and overturned. Julie crouched, trembling, behind it. Her eyes wild and panicked. Kane and I took up positions and continued firing. The assault troops had entered the front of the building.
Unseen thumbs massaged my temples.
–Come, brother. Don’t help them. You aren’t one of them. You’ve killed thousands just like these meat-skins. They are food. You know that.–
“No that’s not me.”
My gut twisted. Disoriented. I knew that voice. With that though came a name. Azaziah.
“I know you.”
Electric arcs danced over my fingertips. The smell of blood felt right. These animals deserved nothing. I was above them. A lord. No. A God.
I pointed my gun at Julie.
–Yesss, brother. Finish them.–
“Now would be a good time for some of that crazy voodoo you have going on,” Kane yelled.
My head snapped around.
“Working on it.” I grimaced. My face flushed with heat and my hands shook. I couldn’t move the gun. My finger constricted on the trigger.
“Don’t worry kid, this isn’t bad. You’re never in trouble till you’re out of bullets. And grenades!” He smiled wickedly and pulled pins on two cylindrical-shaped objects.
“Duck,” he said and chucked one towards the front door and the other out the hole in the wall. I watched the first grenade turn lazily in the air of the ruined shop, before ducking back around the edge of the wall. A deafening thump and whoosh echoed down the corridor. Fire licked the edge of the wall near me.
“Shield. Get the shield up now or die,” an urgent voice whispered.
I forced quiet into my mind and remembered the figure of compassion with energy radiating in waves like nova blasts of pure sunburst. I focused on the entity and strengthened the mental image with an urgent plea into the infinite void of thought space.
Help me.
A powerful adrenaline rush coursed down my body. Something approached. Rapture beyond words. It struck my psyche like a tsunami wave. Unstoppable. It thundered and roared past my mind and into my body, from a place outside of time and space, into the real. I became a beacon of pure compassion.
This was different from the surge of energy that struck the Soulstealers. Larger. Irresistible. My mind trembled and a chaotic sea of tumbled thoughts ricocheted on the stretched fringes of my consciousness. It fought to rip my mind apart. I couldn’t hold it a nanosecond longer and released. Like a living thing it channeled … and roared out towards the creature.
The front of the store vaporized in a cataclysmic explosion. The energy torrent flashed like a nuclear bomb. The creature, blasted into flying bits and lumps of smoking rubbery flesh, vanished in the lashing snow. The troops were smoking heaps, except for two who had been out of the path of the detonation. Wood, glass, and cement chunks vaulted high into the air. The blizzard’s rage paused.
I gawked in disbelief. The psychic storm had manifested in the “real.”
Kane advanced on the two remaining troops sprawled on the ground. Each took a faceful of rifle butt before slumping to the ground.
My heart pounded. Compassion radiated from me in visible golden light. Shocked. I floated a foot above the ground. A ghostly entity stood nearby. The ghost was in baroque plate mail with a shield and longsword, an ethereal paladin. Part in tune with space and part not. I got the sense there were more behind him, but I could not see them. The faint aroma of Old Spice filled the air as the ghost faded.
I willed myself to the floor and tried to reassert some cynicism. The compassion emotion overwhelmed everything. My shield had strengthened during the rush of power, protecting everyone from the violence of the explosion as raining bits of the building fell and slid over its shimmering blue surface. The blizzard swept away smaller debris.
Julie looked like she was in a ragged ecstasy. She sat with her back against a splintered wall, her business suit torn and soiled. Tear-stained cheeks reflected her wide-eyed stare. I had a sinking feeling this was going to be impossible to explain.
Kane reassured me. With his cool professional eye, he just nodded with a sour look as he slowly scanned the now empty snow-covered street. No crazy star-eyed zealot brewing there. I appreciated his attitude, just taking everything in stride and down to business. I was having a hard enough time dealing with the realities of what I could do. Mind and body just weren’t synced up. I could only imagine the mental turmoil for everyone else. Sadness creased my face as I remembered John and Robert.
Kane broke the uneasy quiet. “ We need shelter and someplace we can interrogate these guys.”
“You two are seriously wounded,” Julie gasped. “John has a med kit. It’s in a small office a few doors down the street.” She wiped away tears with a trembling hand.
I looked around the shattered room and saw a towel lying in the corner under a splintered board. I grabbed it and wrapped my right hand up to stop the bleeding. My hand didn’t hurt as much as I expected it to.
“For now let’s get to the other office and wait out the storm. Local police and fire will show up soon,” Kane said. Julie just nodded, lost in thought and oblivious to the raging weather. Stepping over splintered wood and jagged bent metal, we slowly moved down the street.
We struggled against the blizzard as we stepped through the deep snowdrifts. The remains of the grotesque tentacled creature had evaporated into dark smoke, whipped away in the wind. The bodies of the assault team had been thrown from the front of the building and shredded by blast shrapnel.
Several bodies looked melted, with skin blackened and burned as if by intense heat. The melted bodies were not carrying rifles. Strange, black crystalline shoe-boxes lay cracked in their hands. I wanted to look closer but everyone hustled for shelter.
We made our way to a small office building, half-dragging the two unconscious soldiers. Julie pulled a keyring from her pocket. The keys rattled in her shaking grip and missed the keyhole. Kane stepped up and closed his hand over hers.
“Let me help,” Kane said.
“T-thank you,” Julie said as the door swung open. Everyone jammed into the building, shaking snow from head and shoulders. Julie turned up the heat as we secured our guests.
“We don’t need to worry about locals. The blizzard will keep their heads down,” Kane said. He looked at Julie. “I have a buddy who is good at interrogation and discreet. She’s nearby.”
Julie nodded, still eying the thermostat on the wall. She took ragged breaths.
“It will be toasty shortly, f-folks. There is a small kitchen in back for coffee. I’ll brew some and whip up some s-sandwiches. John … keeps … kept a full fridge.” With that she wiped a tear from her cheek and wooden
ly headed to the rear of the office.
Kane and I followed, each with a trooper in tow. The office itself was similar in size to the store and had a spacious backroom. Several desks faced the front plateglass window, with a small visitor’s table out front adorned with magazines on real estate.
Kane secured the unconscious soldiers in a side room.
I wondered what to do next since my house was no longer safe. Julie put her phone down. Her voice, still shaken, filled with excitement, “A contractor for DARPA just finished a project at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado Springs. There are facilities there and living spaces for the team. I will set up a DARPA project for us as a cover and for expenses.”
“The old NORAD facility would work for a base of operations, but we still need some quiet time with these captives. Sugar. They aren’t going to let us waltz in there with a couple of unconscious, handcuffed Asians. Hell. We’ll be lucky they don’t handcuff us,” Kane said.
I nodded in agreement.
Julie’s eyes flashed for a moment. “Well. Maybe you can get what you need after you’re bandaged up? There are some people I must contact. After the storm, we can relocate to the CMC. I know Admiral Barsin. Now. Remove your shirts, please.” Turning, Julie found John’s medical kit, then proceeded to clean and bandage our wounds.
“No, the stitch goes there, ouch!” I said.
“Quit wailing. You’re a grown man,” Julie said.
She turned to Kane and rinsed blood from his shoulder.
Her face reddened. “It’s been a while since I plugged bullet holes.”
“Ya think?” Kane retorted.
“They’re light wounds without bullet fragments,” Julie snapped.
Kane remained stone-faced while Julie administered to him. Though every few moments his eyebrow would twitch.
Seemed everyone had calls to make. Except me. I knew my office would be closed with the storm, so I just relaxed and took prisoner duty. There wasn’t much to see; both soldiers were about medium height with Asian features. Chinese maybe, or Japanese. Neither had appreciable facial hair. They looked unharmed with a few minor cuts and bruises except for the broken noses and smashed cheeks where Kane had applied the judicious use of his gun stock. I glanced over at their weapons in the corner. They looked like carbines. I walked over and picked one up. It was heavier than expected and a red crystal cylinder the size of a pencil ran down the side of the weapon.
“Hey. Kane. Have you seen a weapon like this before?” I yelled out the open doorway.
Kane walked in and took a look at the gun. “Looks like a modified Chinese assault carbine.” He ran his finger over the red crystal. “I’ve no idea what that is.”
The blizzard faded as quickly as it had come. The ominous clouds dispersed eastward, and blue sky winked between them. Snowplows rumbled up the street and pushed four-foot drifts onto the boardwalk. It was an incredible amount of snow for such a short time. Fire and police arrived. I watched from behind a curtain as they surveyed the remains of the store and debris field. Several shook their heads, pointing at this or that as they tried to make sense of the half-dozen corpses in burnt assault gear. Multiple bullet wounds and burns exposed blackened bone. Crime scene photographs were taken, and the corpses were loaded into body bags and hauled away. The adjacent buildings were vacant and when police came to our door, we hunkered down in the back. Quiet. They moved on.
On the horizon, the sun burned a smoky orange when a light knock echoed in the room. Kane opened the back door and a hooded woman came in, shaking snow from her shoulders. She pulled her hood back revealing wavy black hair and a grim expression. Her piercing eyes looked us over. She carried a rucksack like Kane’s. A professional soldier.
“Guys, this is Taima, a former teammate,” Kane said. She gave a minimal nod in our direction and turned to Kane.
“Where are they?”
“In there. Restrained,” Kane said, pointing at a door off to the side.
She nodded. “You’re keeping in shape, Boot.”
“Got to, if I want to beat all those apes pinning for you, darlin.”
“Hah. I’ll handle it from here.” She strode to the door and stepped inside.
I was on my third coffee when the door opened. Taima looked pale and haunted.
“They’re dead,” she said and wiped some dark brown splotches from her hands. A pair of blood-splattered plastic gloves stuck out of her pocket. She shook her head and pushed a lock of black hair behind an ear.
“Their eyes rolled back in their heads, and they stopped breathing. I don’t know what happened. It didn’t look like a drug reaction.” She shrugged. “I’m sorry.”
“Here’s what I got.” She handed Kane a small notebook.
“Wraith, Ltd. in Tokyo?” Kane said. “Never heard of them.”
“There were several specialists on their team,” she said. “Does a Cyber Psi, Psion Shadow Walker, or Bionic Psi ring a bell?”
“Nope.” Kane frowned. “How about you, Lane? This sounds like something up your alley.”
“First time I’ve heard of them,” I said.
Kane looked at me still frowning, his eyes slitted. “Okay.”
After conferring with Kane, Taima left out the back door. It was clear we were in over our heads. Hopefully, I wouldn’t end up on a dissection table, but we needed the CMC and some serious federal backup.
Other than the snowdrifts, all sign of the blizzard had vanished. The sun had set below the treetops when we walked to a local motel. I hit the bed hard, exhausted.
A knock at the door proved to be Kane.
“Everything okay?” he asked, still wearing his tactical gear.
“Yeah, just heading to bed. Uh, what are you doing?”
Kane walked around my room and checked the windows. “Going to walk around a bit. Check the perimeter.”
I may have mumbled something back.
# # #
Stumbling to the coffee shop the next morning, I wasn’t surprised to find Julie had been busy. Four tinted-window SUVs were pulled up in the slushy motel parking lot. Six more Humvees stood in tactical positions around the motel, four with wicked-snouted machine guns on top, another with a mini-gun, and one with a missile launcher.
I should have been shocked, but after last night, a vista filled with armed soldiers and heavy weapons comforted my spirit.
“It’s a scout platoon out of Fort Carson,” Kane observed. Glancing down the road, I saw traffic filled the street all the way out of town. Clearly someone had sent up a giant panic flare. Military vehicles continued to pour into the sleepy mountain town as I watched. It was a beautiful clear day, and typical for Colorado – blizzard one minute, sunbathing the next.
“Julie made a few calls and lit a fire under someone’s butt.” Kane’s eyes twinkled.
Julie pushed back a loose curl. “They just needed to understand the urgency. A blatant attack on American soil by … whoever those people are. That is intolerable. It took a bit of convincing, but once the generals understood what had happened, we got their support. The real show will be when you show them what you can do, Lane.” She raised an eyebrow.
I didn’t say much and nodded over the brim of the first coffee cup. I stuffed my face at breakfast. This was going to be one helluva day.
# # #
The military inspired me. Pride. Fierceness. Singleness of purpose. Something primal. Genetic instinct mingled with long-forgotten memory; a remnant of prehistoric jungle survival with tooth, claw, and club.
After breakfast, they loaded the three of us in separate vehicles. I climbed into the back of a black SUV. The driver and the front passenger both wore black sunglasses and black suits.
We roared down the mountain looking like a maneuver for a visiting Head of State. I craned my neck and gawked at the sight. Two Apache gunships rotated just outside. The rhythmic thump of the helicopter blades shook the vehicle, while a couple of F-15E Strike Eagles roared overhead and circled like metallic condo
rs looking for a rabbit. I recognized the aircraft from their pictures.
The sophistication of the ground attack on American soil had clearly upset the U.S. heavy brass. The proximity to NORAD, U.S. Northern Command and several military bases was little comfort, I imagined. I admired the military, but I wasn’t naive. My future included either a guarded Top Secret box, never to see the light of day, or I could self-direct my future. But how? Once these guys knew what I knew, would they even need me, or would they hack the alien tech out of me and embed it in someone they had trained and no doubt trusted infinitely more?
It sounded selfish, but government had a way of crushing the little guy, accidental or not, and they were stingy with trust. I was a nobody coder who had managed to land on his feet in the most bizarre series of events imaginable. If there had been a rune portal in that car, I would have activated it.
Once down the Waldo Canyon gorge, we picked up speed. The roads were clear in the city, and traffic diverted as the SUVs careened through turns. I thanked the gods the blizzard dumped most of its fury on Woodland Park. If we hit ice at these speeds we would end up in the ditch.
“Why are we going so fast?” I asked.
“The high speeds ensure that a chase car would be spotted,” the lady agent answered. The driver and the lady agent exchanged glances. They reminded me of predators waiting to strike. It was irritating.
“Great, I’m going to die in a flaming car wreck so some chase car won’t get me. Our assailants attacked us during a full-on blizzard. Sounds like they were trying to be discreet, not come guns-blazing, in broad daylight, against a military escort. But, hey, what do I know. Right?” I pulled at my shirt collar which had gotten snug around my neck.
The lady agent in the front seat gave me a sour look but said nothing.
Exiting the interstate, we began the short climb up to the CMC. I recalled from geology classes that Cheyenne Mountain formed part of a series of foothills that bordered the Colorado plains. Rising to twenty-five-hundred feet above Colorado Springs, the foothills were known as the Front Range. Colorado Springs sat at around six thousand feet above sea level, nestled up in the shadow of the Front Range and the much taller Rocky Mountains to the west. Looking north and south, one could see the foothills extended in a jagged line to both horizons.