The man with the shotgun and the shades answered with a thumbs up.
She returned her map to the navigator in the front seat and alternated her attention from left, to right, to straight ahead. Radio chatter from the Century commanders carried over her walkie-talkie.
“Juliet Two to Juliet Command, Something hopping around down by the shoreline…dogs got it.”
“Juliet Three Command to J-3 HK Alpha, open up the doors on the PPD Building and get some noses in there.”
“Roger that, Juliet Command we are Oscar Mike.”
“Romeo 5 to Romeo Command, we’ve got large scat outside the Johnson Elementary School. Looks recent, might be a, ah, Stumphide in the area.”
“Romeo 5 this is Romeo Command, hard copy. Clear the school with caution then search for tracks.”
A flurry of gunshots to the west pulled Nina’s ear from the radio.
“Juliet Two this is Boss, is that your fire?”
An out-of-breath voice replied, “Boss, Juliet Command, J-2 Charlie engaging hostiles between Front and Nutt streets. We’ve got a swarm of jellyfish coming out of a some kind of old railroad building.”
Nina slapped her hand on the roll bar and ordered the driver, “Get us over there.”
In response, the Humvee accelerated from a crawl and sped south on 3 ^ rd Street. Momentum caused her to tilt backwards as one hand held firmly to the bar while the other kept the walkie-talkie close to her ear. The navigator in the front passenger seat of the roofless Humvee relayed directions to the driver.
As they drove, Nina took note of her forces deployed and searching to either side of the main road. To her right, a female handler used a rifle butt to shatter a large plate glass window leading into some old retail shop; a trio of dogs stormed through the hole to search the darkness inside.
To her left, a pair of Rottweilers trapped something scaly in a withering bush at the rim of a parking lot. She saw their jaws work as her ride zipped by.
Further along they passed a massive skeleton-picked so clean the bones shined pure ivory-in a field adjacent to a Salvation Army building.
“Here’s our turn, Captain, hold on,” the soldier steering the Humvee warned as he swerved to the right. Nina’s body swayed in response.
They came upon a skirmish in the streets around an old train station, possibly a museum. The sounds of gunfire and a chorus of barking dogs carried over an open lot and echoed through a nearby parking garage.
Nina nearly fell forward as the Humvee came to an abrupt stop to avoid crashing into the center of the fray.
She counted twenty Giant Jellyfish ranging from six feet around to twice that size, each with cloudy white bodies and rows of similarly colored tendrils. A perimeter of K9s alternated between retreating from the things and attacking.
Nina saw one German shepherd lunge in and take an obviously foul-tasting chunk from one of the beasts as it slithered over a rusted Volkswagen at the middle of an intersection.
She watched as a different Jellyfish propelled its pulsating bulbous body into the air with a blast of expelled gas that sounded like a soda fizzing. The extraterrestrial creature floated-almost flew-for several seconds until landing atop a huge Irish Wolfhound. Everything above the dog’s neck melted inside the attacker’s translucent body.
Before it could ingest the entire Grenadier, two Dobermans charged in from either side and pulled it apart, but a splash of internal digestive juices disintegrated a K9 snout, inflicting yet another Hunter-Killer casualty.
A blast from a handler’s shotgun caused one of the enemy swarm to pop like a water balloon while tendrils from another punctured a Rottweiler’s hide.
However, as the balance of Juliet Two’s Grenadiers converged, the battle turned decisively. Giant Jellyfish slinking on the ground met the gnashing teeth of K9s three or four to one. Jellyfish taking to the air fell to well-placed bullets and buckshot.
She raised her radio and transmitted, “Boss to Juliet Two, remind your team leaders not to kick over hives of Jellyfish; they shouldn’t be this difficult to deal with.”
“Umm, Juliet Two Command to Boss, received and understood. Rookie handler took a pot shot without thinking.”
Another message terminated that conversation: “Juliet Three Command to Boss, we found and destroyed a Devilbat nest on the top floor of the PPD building.”
“Copy that, J-3 Command.”
“Boss, Juliet Three Command, our HK team reported lots of hostile bones in the nest, probably hunting this area good and doing a lot of work for us.”
“Hard Copy, J-3, keep your eyes open for scavengers and bottom-feeders living off the leftovers. Sweep that building good.”
A flurry of gunshots came from her left. An animal of some kind howled in pain, sounding like a cross between a wolf and a rooster. Behind her a small explosion, probably a grenade, and a puff of smoke rose from somewhere to the northeast.
An incoming transmission reported, “Juliet Two to Boss, we’ve got two HK teams at the Convention Center. Something new over here. Some kind of froggy, pig-things.”
“Juliet Two, this is Boss, I copy. Are they giving you a problem?”
“Ahh, that’s a negative, Boss, the dogs can tear them up but they look new to me.”
“Juliet Two, take some photos and box up a couple of samples for the eggheads to dissect.”
“Roger that, Boss.”
Nina leaned between the front seats and told the driver, “Take us down the road a bit.”
They drove through the remains of the Jellyfish battle heading south on North Front Street. They passed a cluster of satellite dishes outside a television station and crossed an overpass that traveled above a parking lot where ten Grenadiers surrounded a trio of three-foot-tall bipedal ‘Gremlins’ resembling a cross between monkeys and wingless bats. The things shrieked as the dogs tore them to pieces.
A block further along, the Humvee stopped in the heart of Cape Fear Community College. Nina watched twenty or so K9s with handlers-including one with a flamethrower-invade the college’s administration building. Two vans hurried to a stop on the sidewalk outside the main entrance and black-BDU clad people unloaded boxes, crates, and folding tables.
Nina radioed, “Juliet Four, get those buildings clear and set up operations. We know there are some people living locally and I want somewhere to put them.”
“Juliet Four, hard copy all. We should be open for business in thirty-minutes.”
Nina heard a gun shot, a bark, and the dying scream of something unworldly come from the building entered by the Hunter-Killers but gave it no consideration; at this point she knew how to distinguish the nuances in gun shots, barks, and alien screams that made the difference between things going according to plan and things going awry.
Instead, she gazed ahead. Front Street narrowed with address after address of retail shops and small businesses, each a potential breeding ground for nasty little things. It would take hours to clear this quadrant, but she would push as hard as necessary to finish the job by day’s end. After all, Shep counted on her.
“Romeo Command to Boss, you copy?”
“Go ahead, Romeo Command.”
“Romeo 5 reports Stumphide tracks heading south. Ah, looks like it’s nesting up here but hunting downtown.”
“Hard copy, Romeo Command. I’ll get reconnaissance on it.”
She leaned to the navigator and asked, “What’s the book say on a Stumphide?”
While the navigator thought, the driver answered, “About one mile hunting radius.”
The navigator consulted his map, ran his finger in several directions, and said, “Well it’s not going to cross the river. Odds are it’s either in our sector or somewhere to the east.” Nina raised her radio and transmitted, “Boss to Overwatch, you copy?”
After a few seconds, a muffled voice replied, “Overwatch, copy, Boss. Go ahead.”
She looked to the sky and, in the distance to the southwest, saw the helicopter flying over the ri
ver.
“Need you to scout downtown. We’ve got a Stumphide somewhere in our sector. Need you to spot it before it spots us.”
“Understood, Boss, we’re on it.”
The chopper banked hard to the east.
A flurry of frantic automatic gunfire reached her ears. Radio chatter confirmed that these sounds belonged to the ‘things going awry’ category.
“J-5 Delta, requesting immediate heavy assistance.”
“Juliet Command to five-Delta, what is the nature-”
“Those damn statue things! Jesus, small arms barely chipping them!”
She radioed, “Boss here, J-5 Delta report your position.”
“Most of my K9s are dead and we’ve-”
“REPORT your position, J-5 Delta.”
“We, um-shit, look out! Back in the house! Get inside! Um, J-5 Delta here, we’re hiding out in this museum house or some old shit, on Market Street, ah, on the corner with Third. Need heavies-”
A loud crash cut off the transmission.
Nina patted the driver on his black baseball cap and pointed forward. He did not need further instruction, the Humvee surged south at a fast pace, slowing only to swerve around toppled cars and fallen shade trees.
“Juliet One,” Nina radioed, “send your K9s south to Third and Market.”
A sound of chewing gum garbled the, “Roger that,” reply.
The Humvee turned hard left on to Market Street and raced east. Pops of gunfire and the clap of a grenade explosion helped direct them to the battle. Nina ignored a ball of eel-things sliding out from an old nightclub as well as a big hairy ‘Type A’ Sloth eating tree leaves outside a bank building as they hurried to help the endangered Hunter-Killer team.
Smoke from skidding tires erupted from the front of the vehicle and Nina nearly fell over forward as the driver brought them to a sudden stop.
Big, muddy tracks led across Market Street, over a pulverized white picket fence, and between the cracked and broken remains of a pair of trees creating an easy-to-follow trail on to the rear grounds of a Colonial-era homestead.
Three fifteen-foot tall giants attacked the rear of that home, swinging swords in slow but powerful strikes. To Nina’s eye, the attackers resembled Roman Legionnaires or a similar warrior from the ancient past. However, these warriors were made entirely of stone, like statues come to life.
Nina, the driver, and the navigator jumped from the car.
“One each,” Nina said as she slid crates from the Humvee’s open-air cargo hold. “Don’t waste them; you’ve got one shot and these things are like gold these days.”
CRASH. A nice chunk of the museum fell. Dogs barked. Bullets ricocheted off the Stone Soldiers as the HK team hiding in the house tried in vain to wound their assailants.
Nina raised her radio and transmitted, “J-5 Delta, get your heads down. We’re hitting these things with AT4s in about three seconds.”
She did not wait for a reply. She could not be sure the handlers even heard her orders but it did not matter; they needed to destroy the Stone Soldiers with the anti-tank rockets or the monsters would kill every human and dog in the museum.
One by one, the rescuers opened the crates holding forty-inch long tubes decorated with all manner of warning labels. Nina and the two men grabbed one each and followed the giant, muddy footsteps into the backyard and over flattened hedgerows as well as the equally flattened bodies of three Rottweilers.
They passed a historical plaque detailing Lord Cornwallis’ stay at the home during the Revolutionary War and stopped thirty feet behind the walking statues that systematically tore apart the outer wall of the museum, exposing the rooms inside and making it resemble a child’s open dollhouse.
Nina saw movement among the collapsed walls. She heard shouts; she heard barks. At least some of J-5 Delta remained, but they would not last much longer.
“Clear behind!” She yelled and then fired with the weapon propped on her shoulder.
While a smoky fire ejected from the back end, a deadly projectile shot forward, aimed only by her eye but aimed well nonetheless. The missile hit one of the Stone Soldiers in its block-shaped ass, sending chunks of rock everywhere. The creature-with no apparent innards other than chalky rock-collapsed into a pile of gravel.
The driver and the navigator fired in succession, each of their shots hit true turning those targets into similar piles.
Nina dropped the now-useless tube and fell to a knee with both hands on her ears. The vibration and the roar disorientated her senses and made her body feel like quivering Jell-O for several seconds. The driver stumbled around and the navigator hunched over with hands on his knees.
As the trio of rescuers regained their composure, a pair of black-clad Hunter-Killer handlers stumbled from the ruins of the museum as well as a bunch of German shepherds and Rottweilers.
“I hate things like that,” Nina’s driver said as he wiggled a finger in his ear to clear away the ringing bell.
“Things like what?” The navigator asked.
“They don’t serve no purpose, it’s not like they’re animals,” the driver answered as he took to stretching his mouth in a series of yawns in another attempt to clear the ringing. “The Sloths and the Stumphides…they’re just animals. But things like those statues, they don’t eat, they don’t shit, they just walk around trying to clobber us.”
Nina added her two cents: “I guess all monsters aren’t created equal.”
The rescued HK squad offered their thanks but a radio call interrupted.
“Overwatch to Boss, you copy?”
Nina unclipped the walkie-talkie from her belt.
“Boss here, go ahead, Overwatch.”
“You know that Stumphide you were looking for…”
…Islands of grass and trees separated the east and west bound lanes of Market Street as it ran spine-like through Wilmington.
A Stumphide straddled one of those islands as it moved along in search of unlucky prey.
The “Stump” came from four legs as thick as trees capable of pulverizing a car-let alone a man-into a pile of scrap. The “Hide” referred to the thick, green leathery skin stretched over a cylinder shaped body.
Two yellow eyes sat menacingly above a crescent maw filled by sharp teeth with wiry fir atop a football-shaped skull. Making matters worse, a dozen short tendrils sprouted from what might be its ‘cheeks’ to grasp prey.
Judging by the tub of fat dangling from this one’s belly, it had enjoyed thinning the heard of Sloths infesting Wilmington.
Nina stood fifty yards from the big monster, watching and waiting for the thing to take notice of her. The creature grabbed a rusting motorcycle with its tendrils, crunched down on the chrome, decided it did not like the taste, and threw the bike aside. At that moment, its yellow eyes looked ahead and saw.
Flanking Nina stood a wall of K9s staring and panting.
The monster and the dog army eyed one another like gunfighters in the old west waiting to draw.
Nina heard the Rottweilers, Dobermans, and Shepherds growl and snarl, their paws scraping the pavement in an anticipation held in check only by the invisible fence of their obedience; waiting for the command.
She gave it.
“Swarm.”
The army of canines ran at full gallop toward the hideous creature capable of splattering any single one of the dogs with a step. Their paws clattered off the pavement as they rolled forward like a flood of claws and fangs. No hesitation. No fear. Nothing other than the desire to follow the master’s command to kill.
They smashed into the Stumphide, first a dozen snouts grabbing and biting, then twenty, then thirty, then more.
It stomped its legs and grabbed with its tendrils, throwing dogs off like rag dolls, their bodies crashed into buildings, the sidewalk, fences, and abandoned cars.
Nevertheless, the dogs charged.
That hideous mouth swallowed a Shepherd whole.
Yet the K9s did not falter.
Its
short tendrils strangled a Rottweiler while its massive feet crushed two more.
The Grenadiers concentrated on the tree-trunk-like legs, tearing at them until the flesh cracked and splintered, laying bare muscle and bone.
A gargled howl came from the beast and it stomped with its wounded leg, killing three K9s and crippling another. The dogs tore into the wound, gnawing, tearing, chewing, and clawing.
A mound of Grenadiers-alive and dead-formed around the Stumphide with some actually climbing on their comrades to rip into the face of the monster.
It threw more off, smashed others, but its legs stamped with less power, less enthusiasm.
Finally, as two dozen Grenadiers lay dead on Market Street, the monstrosity collapsed to its side.
With its belly exposed, the creature was doomed.
The K9s enveloped the animal as if they were a school of piranha, ripping and tearing with a ferocity that even gave Nina a chill…
…For the rest of the day, the helicopter circled above relaying information. Human hunters used more heavy weapons to dispatch several larger hostiles including a giant turtle with an insect head, but the K9s were the shock troops.
Battering rams knocked open doors and Grenadiers poured in. They moved along the boulevards and alleyways relentlessly. No battle fatigue, no hesitation, no second thoughts.
Elements of the second column reached and cleared the college campus at the center of town by late afternoon while other elements pushed east toward the coast.
By nightfall, sixty K9s from the first column and half that number from the second died in the invasion, but an untold number of hostiles also met their fate.
Darkness did not stop the hunt.
Human fighters used night vision while the dogs relied on their acute hearing and smell to track prey.
Several of the humanoid-like Mutants-with their oversized mouths and forked tongues-were found and killed while others made at least a temporary escape on hoverbikes.
Grenadiers shredded a pack of Ghouls and both types of Sloths fell by the hundreds.
As morning neared, the intensity of the fighting waned as hostiles disappeared from the street, retreating to hiding spots. Extermination changed from massed attacks to smaller units tracking and cornering alien creatures.
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