by Ric Beard
There were thousands of them, which was bad enough in itself, but Miles Copeland noted that he spotted a missile launcher when he was surveilling a badlander camp five nights ago. When Davies asked why the fuck he was just hearing about it now, Miles growled.
“Talk to your fucking mayor about not leaving any drones flying in the very direction from which The Chain was most likely to come! I got tied up, literally. Jesus!”
Taking a minute to think about it, Davies realized that, if there hadn’t been drones in the air for Copeland to make contact before now, then Copeland was somewhere nearby, but it wasn’t like he was going to report him.
Right when the commander thought his shock threshold couldn’t climb any higher, he realized a woman in a ball cap who’d been standing beside him, waiting for him to finish his conversation was none other than Reagan Vaughn. He’d been so inundated with information and distracted by his conversation with Copeland, he hadn’t noticed her arrival. Standing right next to her, as he had when Davies commanded the two in the field, was Kade Reynolds.
They announced they were reporting for duty.
What in the world is going on today?
Vaughn was the mayor’s kid, and he had already lost her once. Reynolds was a known drunk. But the flood of citizens merging at the wall in need of real soldiers to lead them encouraged him to reconsider sending them away, so he sent them on their way to find out which of the thousands of citizens outside had ever fired a weapon. Besides, he’d sent a Security Services investigator with a prosthetic hand out to the wall half an hour before. Why not a drunk and a freshly returned P.O.W.?
Before Kade and Reagan turned to go, Reagan reached into her pack and pulled out an industrial-looking Tab similar to what the Expeditionary Forces used in the field to take manual control of drones to scope blind spots. She explained it was a gift from the future mayor’s son and promised a surprise.
“I hope it’s a hell of a surprise,” Davies had said.
“Leave it to me, boss,” she’d replied.
Two hours later, as the sun set and colored the horizon in a blood red glow, Davies heard the first bass-filled rumbling of the badlanders moving to the edge of the tree line facing the main gate west of Triangle City.
The badlander general was standing about two hundred yards from the gate, equidistant between two conventional tanks that could launch shells at the massive concrete wall easily from their position, assuming they had shells. The invaders had rolled up and spread out in a crowd about a half mile wide before stopping. It was a psychological showing of force. A man sitting in a truck handed the general a small black box. Billowing black smoke emitted from the truck’s tailpipe.
Horace introduced himself through the riot box.
“I am General Horace. I command The Chain. I am here to discuss the terms for your surrender. We won’t kill any civilians if your government gives up the city,” the lumbering general said. “The people who keep the water on and the shit flowing out can stay. For the rest of you, move on out to Nashville, and you can have what we left behind. I’ve got some folks there to show it to you.”
What a load of horse shit, Davies thought. Who does this guy think he’s conning?
If they opened the gates and walked out, they’d all be slaughtered, even if The Chain waited for them to be out of sight of the city so as not to offend the people who stayed. They had hated the people of this city for generations. They weren’t letting anyone walk away unscathed.
“Citizens can take their private vehicles. But all government vehicles and weapon stockpiles will have to be left behind. How you get there is up to you, but you gotta go!” He raised his hand in the air and pointed west. The faithful surrounding him on the battlefield cheered their approval.
Chapter Ninety-Three
Paint the Ground
Reagan stood atop a building overlooking the gate, sitting on her padded knees with a warm hood pulled tight around her. She was watching Horace as the last light began to leave the world.
“What a blowhard,” she muttered.
She looked over the side of the building, down toward the line of the lone Expeditionary Forces unit, concealing themselves in ranks on either side of the gate. Then she scanned the top of the wall from north to south, eyeing the citizens who’d lined it, each carrying a JenCorp 7000 or 8000 series pulse rifle. She zoomed in with her SmartGlasses and switched to night vision. At the citizens’ feet were piles of FusionTech fusion rifles.
When Reagan had called her father, asking for his assistance, he’d balked. He had been in the safe confines of the Command Center at City Hall and hadn’t planned on leaving until the badlanders walked in and forced him out. But he agreed to stay on the line and hear her out.
Reagan Vaughn looked down at the device resting on her pack before raising her head and eyeing the line of badlanders standing beneath and in front of the tree line, waiting for the word go. Many carried the expected bullet-firing rifles and pistols, but she was surprised how many trademarked red and white JenCorp pulse rifles she saw. Morgan had been quite the busy boy.
Her earbud clicked.
“This is Commander Davies. Mayor Vaughn is in the Command Center at City Hall and will not be ‘negotiating with marauders,’ as he puts it. So, let’s get ready to light the night sky and paint the ground with these fuckers’ blood.”
Reagan picked up the box and flicked the red lever on the side. Then she started copying the key sequence Blake Jensen had sent to her Tab.
“Citizens,” Davies continued. “Toss ‘em out!”
Reagan watched as the citizens unshouldered their JenCorp rifles, swung them by the straps and tossed them with all their might from the concrete wall and into the night sky. Then as instructed, they reached down, picked up their fusion rifles and held them low, out of the view of the invaders, as they filed down the interior stairs toward the bottom of the wall.
Victory cries sounded from the badlander contingent as the weapons soared out of the city in a sign of surrender. Reagan could see Horace waving his hands out to his sides, then up and down, encouraging his men to cheer. She could almost read his mind. He would be the man remembered for delivering a new future to his people. After the screaming subsided, he clicked the talk box on again.
“That’s the right idea, folks!” he said. “Now, reckon you better get the boss out here or start filing out of the gate if he’s too much of a coward to come talk to me.”
On cue, the massive metal gate lurched and split up the middle, the doors swinging in their wide arcs welcoming the invaders to the city.
Chapter Ninety-Four
Over My Own Breathing
In the old days, Sean would have called the number of badlanders crawling through the forest a ‘metric fuck ton.’ He was way too close to them for his personal taste. But it seemed his sister had gone from introverted techie queen to all-out nutcase in the many decades they’d been apart—and something told him he was about to pay the price.
“I’m going out there,” she’d said as she entered the aqueduct leading out of the city.
“What are you, fucking crazy?” He pointed at his temple.
She set a level gaze on him. “I’m not crazy at all. I’m trained. You’ve missed a lot, William. I know what I’m doing.” Miranda tightened her weapon holster.
“Your face is beaten and bruised. How’s the rest of you?”
“Not that yours looks any better. You look like someone stuck a small iron on your head.”
“And you’re limping like you’ve got a rod in your hip or something.”
“I’ll give it an injection! Jesus. There’s something you should know about Marie, Lucian, and me. We’ve built an organization that does this.”
Sean tipped his head and raised a brow. “Organization? In this day and age?”
“Shut it, smart ass. This is what we do. We’ve been doing it for a long time in the townships along the east coast. We know how to hide ourselves, disappear, and when nec
essary, fight like wolverines.”
“Red Dawn references? Really?”
A puzzled gaze transitioned to a frowning smirk. “How do you even remember crap like that? Be serious.”
“Ha.”
“Whatever.” Miranda rolled her eyes.
“You’re still not going out there. They say there’s thousands of them, Randy!”
She dropped her shoulders. “Don’t fucking call me Randy. Even Lucian calls me Lexi now. Get used to it.”
“Then call me Sean, I’m used to that. No one’s called me William
in—”
“We don’t have time for this.”
“I’m going with you.”
Lexi shook her head. “No way.”
He grabbed her shoulders and leveled his eyes on her.
“I just got you back. There’s no way you’re going out there without me. If you’re gonna get your ass shot off, I’m getting my ass shot off, too. I’ve got nobody, Mir—” he’d hesitated. “Lexi.”
He glared into her eyes and tightened his grip on her shoulders.
“Shit.” She dropped her head.
“Yup.” He released her shoulders.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” She spun to the side, bobbing her head.
“Yup.”
She turned back to him and sighed. “Okay, let me look at you. Yeah, you were an XL in the old days, right? Shit. Ok. Let’s get you a suit.”
“A suit?”
“Just come on.” She grabbed his lapel and started trudging back into the city.
The combat suit was skintight. He wasn’t sure how she wore one of the damn things. But he could tell it breathed, and even though he hated the way it hugged around his neck, he knew the metal-woven padding would take a beating.
“You designed this?”
“Are you trying to get us killed?” she whispered harshly, pointing at her throat mic and then her earpiece. The mic sent her whispers to Sean’s ears as if she were talking aloud.
They were standing behind the trunk of a fallen tree, looking out onto a dirt road that was used to move expo forces in and out of the city. Lexi was staring through SmartGlasses at the mammoth of a machine. “That’s definitely what Miles saw.” She pointed up at the top of the beast. “And that’s definitely a missile.”
Sean Shrugged. “I bet they don’t even know how to target with that thing.”
“If you knew about the last six years I spent in this city, you would understand why I’m not willing to risk it.”
“How’d they even move it? Seems big to me for solar power, and they can’t possibly have hydrogen facilities, can they?”
“Biofuel. The Chain has corn fields like you wouldn’t believe. We’ve seen them. Biofuel is relatively easy to make. See those tanks on the bed attached to it?” She pointed. “Definitely corn fuel.”
“Looks like this is the back of the column.” He pointed further west. “Looks clear back there.”
“Yeah, they’re all in front of it. They think they’re guarding it.”
“Guess they didn’t count on a couple of ninjas in black combat suits.”
“Yeah, because you’re a ninja.” She blew her tongue between her lips.
“I see you’re still funny.” He looked up and across the branches flooding the night sky above. “It’s darker than a colon beneath this tree cover.”
Lexi smiled.
“What?” Sean asked.
“Tap the frame of those glasses.” She tapped her own to demonstrate.
Sean tapped and saw a numbered menu appear. The second item on the menu was ‘Night Vision.’
“Tap once for number one, twice for number two, and so on. You can also tap once to bring up the menu, and then say the name of the item you want.”
Sean tapped twice in rapid succession and saw the whole forest light up. “These things are amazing. If that interstate gets cleared and we manage to leave anything in Triangle City standing, the people of OK City are going to deplete your entire stock.”
“I’ve gotten so used to them, they’re second nature.”
“It seemed every single person in Triangle City wears them. I thought I’d walked into some kind of science fiction novel from the Fifties. Now I get it.”
Lexi was peering back and forth, looking into the woods. She turned to Sean. “Not the best time to talk about it.”
She took off. They bent low and jogged west while skirting trees and hopping ditches. A branch cracked under the snow beneath Sean’s feet, prompting him to freeze and look around, but Lexi kept going. He watched her feet strike the snowy ground silently as she fled, despite the blanket of snow, branches, pine combs, and dried up pine needles that covered the ground.
How the hell does she do that?
She stopped behind a wide oak, and he caught up.
“Now what?” He asked.
She turned and sat down with her back to the tree.
“Now we wait.”
“For what?”
“You’ll see.”
“Isn’t your ass going to get cold?”
“The padding is insulated, waterproof.” She shrugged. “A little cold never hurt anyone. But I won’t be wet.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes, Lexi sitting with her back against the wide tree, her eyes closed and her breathing steady.
“Planning on a nap?” Sean joked.
“If you’re coming back to The Foundation with me, you’re really going to have to learn how to use that microphone wrapped around your throat. I’m not trying to be a bitch; I just want to keep you alive.”
Sean adjusted his volume. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay, babe.”
A strange sound echoed in the distance, and Lexi’s ears perked up. She jumped up and leaned around the tree to listen.
“What is that?”
“Sounds like a riot box,” Lexi said. “I think the badlanders are talking to Triangle.”
“How do you know?”
“The cone on the boxes face one direction, and the sound is projected in a 90-degree arc. If Triangle was talking, we’d hear it a little better from here because the cone would be facing us.”
“Oh, that makes sense.”
“Either way. That’s as good a signal as anything. Maybe we can cause a distraction.”
“A dist—”
But she was already gone, moving in the direction of the missile launcher.
“Shit,” Sean muttered.
Sean hauled after his sister as they dodged trees, his footsteps clumsy when compared to hers, his chest heaving, hers rising and falling in deep breaths.
Damn, she’s fast.
Lexi stopped and held up a fist. At least I know what that means. He stopped where he was, about twenty feet behind her. They looked around. The missile launcher’s rear axle couldn’t be more than fifty yards away, where the tree line ended.
“You hear that?”
“I couldn’t hear anything over my own breathing,” Sean said.
“Shh!”
There was a crackle in the pine straw, and they both turned their heads as a giant with a lock of curly black hair and a long, fuzzy beard stepped out from behind a tree. Sean saw Lexi squat with her butt hovering inches off the ground. The giant grunted and set something down next to the tree. Then he pushed his pelvis out and started tinkering with his belt, having just done some business of the biological sort.
That belt must have cost an entire cow.
The behemoth of a man looked up and squinted, his belt forgotten. Could he smell them?
Fee, Fi, Foe—
Lexi was frozen in front of him. Sean also played statue as the giant tilted his head and squinted harder in Lexi’s direction. Sean looked back at his sister as the giant took a tentative step forward and stopped again, leaning in, squinting.
Even though the monster before them wasn’t wearing SmartGlasses, Sean was sure he had spotted Lexi. Perhaps he thought she was an animal. God, the guy had to be close to seven feet tall
. And he was reaching for whatever he’d set next to the tree. With no apparent effort, the giant swung a bonafide battle axe onto his shoulder. Now Sean thought of Paul Bunyan and wondered why the hell The Chain would assign this guy to the back of the ranks when he could clear columns of enemies with that axe arcing wildly like a pendulum of terror. Then he heard a whirring sound and slowly turned his head to the left so as to mask his movements from Mister Bunyan.
The launcher was raising the missile. That was when Sean realized the big guy had been left here to guard it because he would make little more than a large target on the front lines, especially since all he seemed to be carrying was an axe.
The giant started moving forward, each step measured, moving his head up and down to ensure his footing. Whereas Lexi seemed to dance across the earth like some sort of weightless druid, every step the giant took caused the ground beneath to report via cracks, crackles, and pops as everything beneath him was crushed. He probably wasn’t a guy who made his combat career on the concept of being quiet.
Sean could easily swing the rifle off his back and shoot at the guy, but that action presented two potential problems. For one thing, the noise would probably bring the guards around the missile launcher running as they sounded the alarm. For another, Sean had never fired a fusion weapon in his life. He had no idea if it kicked, or if so, how hard. If he missed, he would draw Goliath’s attention. While he certainly didn’t want anything to happen to Miranda—in his mind, she would always be Miranda—he was thinking that being the unknown entity when the man launched at his sister would be valuable if he could get close enough to ensure a good shot at the beast. Of course, the third problem was the giant would snap her like a twig if he got hold of her.
“C’mon, mister man.”
Sean heard the whisper in his headset and jerked his head back at Lexi.
“That’s it,” she said.