Empire ba-2

by Anthony DeCosmo

  A dozen dogs-mainly Huskies and Shepherds-trotted to the northwest edge of the camp staring at a line of giant evergreens that resembled more a castle wall than the rim of a forest.

  Reverend Johnny emerged from one of the cargo Eagles wearing a white arctic jacket and carrying a machine gun.

  “I fear something has taken note of our presence. Perhaps we should be leaving?”

  Brewer-his eyes focused on the forest-answered, “We’re not done refueling yet. We have two birds that can’t take off.”

  Johnny said, “It is our misfortune that despite the brevity of our stay something has stumbled upon-dear Lord, did you feel that?”

  Both men glanced at the tough soil beneath their feet and felt another tremor.

  The Reverend whispered, “Whatever it is-”

  “-it must be big,” Jon finished and as the words left his mouth he saw the line of K9s growling at the woods step back, in unison, and their angry snarls grow more subdued.

  He ordered, “Reverend, all the fueled ships airborne now.”

  Both men saw movement in the otherwise black forest, and heard the unmistakable crack and crash of a tree falling. Then another. Then another.

  “Rev, get going!”

  As ordered, Reverend Johnny hurried toward one of the nearby cargo-carriers, identified by a larger side door. He went inside where the pilots should be waiting.

  Jon managed to pull his eyes away from the forest and take stock of his men. Like him, they stood and watched, waiting to see what evil came their way. He pulled his walkie-talkie and radioed, “All ships that are refueled get airborne now. Drop everything, board now, and get airborne. Everyone else to arms!”

  Suddenly, the K9s retreated in a sprint from the perimeter and gathered near the center of the camp as a giant came out of the forest.

  Glowing red eyes some twenty-stories in the sky grabbed the onlookers’ attention first. As floodlights splashed on the creature, more details came into focus.

  It wore a scaly, tinny skin that could have been flesh or possibly a kind of metal armor. It stood on two muscular, thick legs that, again, could have been organic or could have been manufactured struts. Ram horns wrapped its head on either side of those raging red eyes and it pushed aside mighty evergreens as easily as parting curtains using arms ending in cloven hooves.

  A Goat-Walker.

  Jon knew that Trevor encountered a goat walker for the first time during an expedition to the alien gateway in Binghamton, New York, five years ago. It had stepped into the world from some hellish dimension just as a truck bomb detonated. According to the story, a vortex formed when that gate collapsed, sucking the creature-and many of Trevor’s expedition including his friend Danny Washburn-to some unknown, but certainly horrid, fate.

  While rare, they proved one of the most dangerous hostiles. Unlike the majority of alien monsters that could be categorized as predator or prey, a Goat-Walker did not conform to any logical law of nature. No nests or dens were ever found, the walkers did not appear to feed on their victims and their physical characteristics-particularly the hoof-like cloven appendages where hands should be-seemed ill suited to long-term survival.

  They behaved more like an elemental force than a living animal; a walking tornado bent on destruction. As if natural selection on whatever nightmare world they hailed from favored fear and chaos in some warped version of Darwinian evolution.

  “Javelins! Get the Javelins!” Brewer shouted at the soldiers assigned to the two transports still refueling. “There should be some onboard Eagle 2!”

  The K9s mustered their courage and bound toward the walking skyscraper as it stepped into the heart of the camp. They stood no chance, of course, but instinctively knew they needed to buy time.

  One after another, sliding ramps closed and airships took to the sky in haste. Reverend Johnny’s cargo Eagle shot up in a rapid ascent.

  Meanwhile, small arms fire from the thirty-men not onboard fleeing ships pelted the creature like pebbles thrown at a battleship, while the dogs yapped and snarled.

  It hovered over the camp as if considering what to stomp first. A transport parked at the outer rim of the camp took off right at the giant’s feet, drawing the creature’s attention. The pilot went to full acceleration at the same moment the monster swung a hoof-like hand. The blow missed by less than two feet.

  With one potential victim out of reach, it returned its attention to the ground and stepped toward a crowd of men. They managed to scatter clear of the impact but the tremor knocked them off balance. The beast brought one of its warped ‘hands’ to the ground aiming to crush one of the men who escaped the first blow. A Grenadier dashed in front of the fallen soldier, grabbing the monster’s attention at the last second and averting the strike.

  Jon raised his carbine and fired, aiming for the inferno-red eyes. His bullets either missed or did nothing; it seemed this animal offered no weak spots, no quick solutions. Nonetheless, he would try to distract and confuse the monster while the transports escaped.

  Two bolts of energy blasted from Johnny’s airborne cargo Eagle via a turret mounted below the nose cone. Like the airships themselves, those energy weapons had been captured from the ‘Redcoat’ aliens following the Battle for Wilkes-Barre.

  One massive leg and the hoof at the end of it kicked, sending a broken dog flying and a pair of soldiers tumbling. A second kick smashed the side of a transport Eagle. The side door crumpled in and vehicle nearly toppled as it took to the air.

  Another stream of energy from the cargo Eagle rippled across the beast’s snout, scorching its goat face and eliciting a roar that echoed through the wilderness. The very sound felt like an assault; Jon instinctively cowered for the briefest of moments. There was something about this entity that made it feel even more alien than the extraterrestrials that had invaded Earth: as if even among the invaders, this thing was an abomination.

  A cloven hoof where a hand should be swung at a flying Eagle, glancing a landing pod and sending it into a flat spin. The engines screamed as the plane spiraled toward the treetops, grazing branches before regaining control.

  The Goat-Walker turned again to the humans and dogs scurrying around its feet. With a grunt that sounded like an explosion of compressed air, it leaned over and struck with both arms, pounding one into the backbone of a refueling transport and crushing two men and a dog with the other.

  Two contrails raced skyward and a pair of anti-tank missiles walloped the gargantuan in the neck. Pieces of what might have been either flesh or building materials poured down as well as a muddy red liquid.

  The creature stood to full height and howled.

  “Keep firing! Keep firing!” Jon ordered even as he cursed the waste of precious ordnance.

  A hand grabbed his shoulder from behind; he nearly jumped out of his skin.

  Casey Fink shouted in his ear, “They’re done refueling! We can bug out!”

  “Do it!” Jon shouted as the creature swung and missed at the two soldiers who had launched the missiles. “Take off! Everyone get onboard and get the hell out of here!”

  Troops hurried for the two remaining transports while the two tankers retracted hoses from the lake.

  “Withdraw!” Brewer shouted, this time directing his order at the K9s. The dogs wasted no time in scampering onboard Eagle 2.

  Into his radio Jon transmitted, “We need covering fire to take off. Blast the damn thing!”

  A swarm of Eagles fired potshots at the beast from energy turrets.

  Jon slung his rifle and raced onboard Eagle 3 where Casey Fink shouted orders of his own into his radio: “Tankers, get out of here!”

  A voice answered, “Retracting pumps now, Sir.”

  “Just friggin’ go. We’re out of time!”

  Eagle 2 blasted away from the surface. The sound drew the attention of the snarling monster.

  Jon, standing at Eagle 3’s open side door, saw two of his soldiers-one man helping a limping woman-emerge from cover at the edge o
f the forest and hurry toward his transport. He waved encouragement to them but the wounded woman could only move at half-speed.

  The Goat-Walker apparently realized most of its prey had escaped and aimed for the three ships remaining on the ground: Jon’s ship number 3 and the two tankers.

  “Come on!” Jon shouted at the limping soldiers. “Haul ass!”

  One of the hideous legs of the massive creature thudded to the ground just ten yards from the transport’s side door, half as close as the fleeing soldiers.

  Jon raised his hand to wave again, but the sliding door slammed shut in front of his face. He turned to see Casey Fink pressing the ‘lock’ switch. The pilot must have reacted to the ‘sealed’ indicator on his console and the Eagle took to the air with such acceleration that Jon and Casey fell to the floor.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Jon shouted with the faces of the abandoned personnel etched in his mind.

  “Saving our asses, General,” Fink answered.

  The transport shuddered as if absorbing a glancing blow. The fifteen men buckled into seats groaned a collective gasp.

  Jon scrambled to his feet, opened the cockpit bulkhead, and staggered into the nose cone where a solitary pilot wearing bulky navigation goggles struggled with the controls.

  Through the windshield, Jon saw the red eyes of the Goat-Walker. He felt them look right at him; regard him.

  “This was no accident,” he muttered but the pilot could not hear; he grunted and growled as he tried to control the rapidly ascending craft. “That thing was sent to stop us.”

  Streaks of energy slammed into the monster’s head. It roared again.

  “Hold on,” the pilot warned and he reversed thrust, pushing the ship out over the lake, away from the bank.

  Jon sat-fell-into the navigator’s chair. Through the window, he saw the two tankers take off. The Goat-Walker saw them, too. It struck at one, missing as the ship shot out of reach. The second failed to escape; a hoof smashed into its mid-section, exploding the purification equipment and tossing the craft into the icy waters of Lake Edouard.

  “Oh Christ,” Jon’s pilot muttered. “Oh Jesus Christ.”

  The white nose of the tanker ship bobbed straight up and then slipped into the dark waters. As the transport moved off, darkness swallowed the banks of the lake where their camp had been moments before.

  Reverend Johnny’s voice piped through the radio on the console. “All flights, report in. Is General Brewer on the line?”

  Jon leaned forward and punched the transmit button.

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “We made it, Jon. That was close.”

  Jon thought of the soldiers left behind and the tanker ship drowning in the lake.

  “Yeah, we made it.”

  –

  “Sir,” Casey Fink woke Jon from a light sleep. “We’re about ready to touch down in Hopedale.”

  “What? Already?”

  Jon stood and stretched. He walked along the row of seats then opened the sliding cockpit door. Daylight glared in through the windshield.

  “We’re heading in for a landing, Sir,” the pilot informed and Jon felt the ship descend.

  A frigid bay split Hopedale into two distinct parts. To the north, the city proper including its primary claim to fame, the historic Moravian Mission House.

  The southern end of that bay was less developed and dominated by a primitive shipping dock comprised of wooden planks and buildings set upon a piled stone foundation.

  With a harbor deep enough to accommodate heavy tankers, Hopedale served as an ideal place to rendezvous with the Newport News.

  In any case, the Eagles descended on to a flat, open area between low rolling hills north of the dock. The landing gear sank into soft ground. After a few moments, the doors opened and the travel-weary troops disembarked.

  A biting cold chased away their weariness. While still August, a wet, chilly breeze cut through the men’s BDUs. Several returned inside the transports to retrieve their arctic gear.

  Jon left most of the men and Reverend Johnny with the Eagles and took Casey Fink and a small force to the docks.

  Gentle mountains overlooked the bay while grassy bush and rocky beaches covered most of the coastline. Calm water sloshed and curious seabirds squawked beneath a canopy of white clouds. A salty, marshy smell blew around on the wind.

  At the dock waited an intimidating beast from the deep. It stretched more than a football field in length from bow to stern and was certainly a predator.

  The Newport News, a Los Angeles Class nuclear submarine, had been one of the best and most modern attack boats in the U.S. arsenal before something other than Soviet bombers or Chinese ICBMs destroyed the country.

  Jon and his small team approached the dock as a group of sailors moved to meet them.

  The lead man wore a Navy Captain’s uniform and a leather military jacket. He sported thin streaks of gray in otherwise brown hair, but most of that remained tucked under his cap.

  The two groups converged and eyed each other cautiously.

  “Captain Farway?”

  The man with the brown hair and cap nodded. “General Jon Brewer, I presume?”

  This time Jon nodded.

  They knew each other only through a few radio transmissions and written dispatches. Jon had little time to worry about boats when focused on fighting a land war.

  Most of the naval forces, including the two nuke subs in their arsenal, worked with Gordon Knox for use in intelligence gathering. Unlike the bulk of “The Empire’s” military forces, original crews manned most of the ships. Arguably, the Navy survived the Apocalypse better than the other services.

  The Captain extended a hand and smiled.

  “I’ve heard a hell of a lot about you, General. I hear you know how to get things done these days.”

  Jon accepted the shake. “We give it our best.”

  “I think it’s fair to say that so far your best has been much better than anyone else’s. Still, I guess you’re needing a ride?”

  Jon replied, “I want to go see Santa Claus. Get my list in early, you know?”

  The Captain and his sailors chuckled.

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Farway asked.

  Jon turned to Casey Fink and ordered, “Go round up the men and start moving supplies down here.”

  Fink took a step but paused as Farway said, “Oh, one other thing. I hope your guys aren’t claustrophobic. You see, General, we’re spending most of this trip under the surf. You’re going into a big metal coffin. It’s tight in there. Real tight. And you hear things, too. Sometimes it’s just the currents, maybe a whale. But these days, well, these days there are things you hear down there that just aren’t right. Being on a sub for days on end, why that was always enough to put a little shake in a man’s hand. These days it’s enough to drive a man to crazy thoughts. So the question is, can you handle it?”

  Jon looked at Captain Farway, shrugged, and told him, “I have a four year old daughter.”

  “Oh,” Farway considered. “Then this should be a walk in the park.”

  8. Lair

  General Tom Prescott gazed at the ruins of the destroyed compound with a dozen soldiers standing on his flanks and his mobile command post-a modified version of an M113 armored personnel carrier-parked in the driveway.

  At one point, the compound had consisted of several smaller buildings surrounding a large one protected by a chain link fence. The area covered several hundred square yards in a lightly wooded area off an access road in the shadows of the Appalachian Mountains.

  Whatever purpose the compound served went up in ashes and smoke a long time ago, several years at least. Smashed and burned piles of rubble stood in place of wood and stone buildings, the chain link fence torn and flattened.

  To the General, it resembled a thousand other country homes and estates he had seen along the Appalachians as they secured the expanding Empire’s western flank.

  He noticed human
bones scattered in the debris. Again, a sight he saw on a daily basis. Certainly not worthy of pulling him away from his tour of the captured Radford Army Ammunition plant, one of his force’s most important objectives as they cleared the area around Blacksburg, Virginia.

  “Captain Rhodes,” he asked in a tone that did not hide his annoyance. “Pardon my French, but why the heck am I out here staring at rubble?”

  “This is just the introduction. You might want to follow me, Sir.”

  Rhodes directed General Prescott around the piles of debris to a wooded and rocky slope that ascended into the mountains.

  The posse of soldiers led by the two officers walked along an overgrown path into the woods, pushing their way through low-hanging leaves belonging to short white and dark green Striped Maple trees. Prescott stumbled over something.

  “Holy shit,” the General shot when he saw the obstruction.

  “That’s just the first of them,” Rhodes referred to the old, dried mess the General tripped over.

  “Is that…is that what I think it is?”

  “Yes, Sir. You might want to take a look around you.”

  The General did as his Captain suggested and surveyed the forest surrounding them. Among the rotting leaves left over from last autumn and wildflowers competing for what little sunlight sneaked between branches, he saw mounds of something familiar. Years old, so old that they blended in with the forest floor, hidden by time and wind and falling leaves and rain.

  “Sweet Jesus.”

  “Dozens of them, Sir.”

  The General scratched his head. “We need to call the boss. He needs to see this.”

  “Oh, that isn’t the punch line, General, Sir.”

  After years of service with Rhodes, including time in the U.S. Army prior to Armageddon, Prescott knew that when his best officer emphasized ‘Sir’ it meant he was nervous or disturbed or really interested in drawing attention.

  Rhodes led Prescott further along. The trees thinned and the upward slope eased into a small plateau set in the side of the mountain. That flat space ended at a big wall of earth. There, partially hidden under the roots of a massive overturned Hemlock tree, waited an opening.