The Unchanged (Book 3): Safe Harbor

by Starnes, T. M.

  “Yeah.” Cheyenne leaned over and rested her head on my right shoulder.

  Roars and raucous sounds drifted through the smoke cloud. Music, sirens, radio chatter and people crying and praying created a continuous racket.

  Damn it, we’re not done. We’re not!

  Cheyenne straightened as I turned and raised my voice to be heard. “Everyone listen! We stop them! We stop them! We don’t let them get past us! We kill anything that moves! Watch the sides! Watch the water! Pick your targets! Take out the small ones before the big ones! Runners, the fast ones, first! Tanks come last! We’re not done! This is our home! We will keep it safe! We’re still human! And we won’t let them harm our friends and families! Fight! Fight! Till you can’t fight anymore! Then run! Then fight again! Fight till the last Changed is dead!”

  I shut up and was surprised to hear people cheering.

  Cheyenne grabbed my shirt, pulled me close, and gave me a passionate kiss.

  When we separated, she stared up at me, her eyes fully dilated, “That’s why I love you. You might be down, but you don’t give up.”

  Roars, clicking, twirling, and twittering, the language of the Changed, sounded way too near.

  Suddenly there was a loud thump behind the cloud of smoke and the Mustang flipped into Pamlico sound.

  “You looove me,” I whispered.

  Cheyenne grinned and aimed her rifle. “Shut up. Don’t spoil it.”

  I aimed my rifle into the smoke. “But you looove me.”

  “Shut up.” She smiled.

  “Cheyenne looooves me.”

  “I’m so going to kick your butt after this.”

  The first Fish men broke through the smoke and ran straight for the wall as the survivors opened fire, taking them down in mid-run, tumbling along the road.

  Following them was hell personified.

  More monsters burst from the smoke. Fish men Runners snarling, hissing, and clicking, trying to figure a way past the metallic obstruction in their way. One, then twenty, then forty, then a continuous wave of them. No Roamers, Spitters, Porcupines or any other lesser type than the Tanks. These were the worst, fastest, and deadliest of the Changed on the Outer Banks, second only to the destructive force of the Tanks.

  Shots rang out below and beside me, radios squawked around us, people shouting and screaming, roars, coupled with sirens and music rose over the smoke-filled landscape.

  Shouts of “more ammo” rang out as fast runners carried boxes of cartridges up and down the walkways. The smell of gunpowder filled the air, erasing the pleasant scent of the Atlantic Ocean.

  Shooters on the ground fired at Fish men trying to come around the wall by water. Even the spotters on the ocean boats were firing between the dunes and the metal wall. Fish men turned and dived into the ocean to attack them. The fastest speed boat was doing water doughnuts churning up the swimming Fish men with their motor purposely running right over them and coming back to do it again. The pilot was skilled, the sands of Bruxton were unforgiving and hid many shallow sandbars, yet the speedboat avoided running aground.

  Three vehicles from the Beta wall arrived, blowing their horns to let us know they were coming, parking among the twenty to twenty-five already parked and aimed toward Bruxton, bringing more defenders rushing up the ladders or joining the fighters on our flanks.

  Two Crab men scuttled out of the smoke and ran toward the wall, impaling fallen Fish men on their way with their Crablike legs. We concentrated our gunfire on them.

  Thank goodness they were softshell crabs. Hah!

  As they fell, our attention returned to the Fish men Runners.

  The stench of the Changed and their blood caused many to vomit, which just added to the reek. Dry heaves happened but the defenders continued their attacks. The Fish men sometimes took numerous shots before they fell. Unless someone was lucky and struck a vital area or head.

  Lurching out of the smoke was a Snapper Changed, slightly bigger than the one we had killed already. I shouted at the second-level shooters to target it. The top level concentrated on the Fish men.

  Screams and barking rang out from our left from below.

  Three Fish men had broken through our defenses and charged their targets. King ran at them, barking and snarling, nipping at legs then breaking off. Julie’s ninjas didn’t even hesitate. They rushed forward with bows, arrows, and slingshots and those weird rubber-coned slingshots she had and opened fire.

  Arrows struck the creatures in the head and marbles blasted through the rest of their skulls making quick work of them. The armed, rifle-bearing, ground defenders, regrouped and closed the breach as Julie repositioned her people. Lexi was one of those people, firing her Desert Eagle, jumping in her small hand, but still firing anyway. Her sister Mia remained in the green monster staring out the back window at her sister and Julie’s Ninjas, gripped in her hands was one of her and her sisters Louisville sluggers.

  Two more pickup trucks arrived, and I recognized Diego wearing our school uniform and my crazy teenager student was carrying a rifle in one hand and a freakin’ spear in the other! I realized what he was doing as others grabbed more spears and sharpened kung fu staves from his truck bed.

  Diego screamed orders for them to hurry to the lowest gun holes of the wall, climbing aboard the tour buses and positioning themselves through the lowered or shattered windows of the tour buses. They started poking through at the climbers attempting to crawl up over the piling dead.

  We were going full medieval!

  Good work, Diego, you honor your fallen martial arts brothers and sisters! Sifu Wong would be proud!

  I emptied my Colt over the side of the wall at the Fish men fighting for grips on the creases of the metal sheeting, waiting for more shells for my Remington.

  The Snapper Changed finally fell and the Fish men used its carcass as a raised platform to leap higher to our position.

  Shouts for more shells echoed down the line. Cheyenne shouted for the guy who raided our Jeep and the ammo boxes we kept in the rear. We didn’t like to be low on ammo anytime. She shouted for another box and told him to just shove the shells in her pockets as she kept firing while I reloaded. Once I finished and opened fire, she reloaded, back and forth we went.

  “Tank! It’s the monster turtle Tank!” Someone screamed.

  The smoke surged ahead of the behemoth, displaced by the air in front of its enormous body, as it rushed our defenses.

  We had only seen a Tank this size twice in the last week. A misshapen one in Berndale and one in the distance near Fort Craig. If we weren’t so dehydrated, having to watch our drinking supply, I’m sure many of us would have been wetting our pants, myself included. Cheyenne froze for a moment, I could see it out of the corner of my eye. I grabbed her chin, turned her face toward me and pressed my lips for a moment against hers. She blinked, blinked again, shook her head, screamed in rage, and unloaded her Winchester at the oncoming monstrosity.

  The Fish men parted as the Snapper tossed many of them out of its way, or simply stomped those in its path as it charged in its swaggering, swaying gait.

  “Hold on!” I screamed, grabbing hot sheet metal, and Cheyenne’s arm just as she reached for me, and others repeated the same warning along the wall.

  The Snapper collided with the barrier like a battering ram.

  The layers of sheet metal held but dented inward. The stacked cars on top of the tour buses slid from their positions, didn’t fall, but the concussive force forced people to topple from each level of scaffolding. Wood splintered, people screamed, weapons clattered to the earth, people ran from the wall.

  But the blocking two tractor trailer rigs held!

  The wall did not collapse!

  The Snapper Tank did not break through!

  “Get up!” Cheyenne and Randy screamed, “Get up! They’re climbing its shell!”

  Our ammo supplies were tossed back up from others on the ground, weapons included, and defenders ran back to fighting even as the Snapper tried
to climb the wall itself. More and more Fish men and another Crab man burst out of the smoke and saw what the other Fish men were doing and tried to scuttle over the behemoth’s shell too, but we kept up the barrage.

  As the wind from the sea picked up again, blowing the smoke from the grenades toward the sound, the line of oncoming horde of monsters, obscured from our sight, came into view.

  There were still hundreds more coming, packed together shoulder to shoulder, in full charge.

  Purple bodies and larger Tanks massed together stretching across the width of the road as far as the eye could see as the wind blew the smoke over the road and obscured the charging creatures again.

  Cheyenne glanced at me.

  “Do it.” She said, knowing my thoughts.

  I nodded. “Abandon the wall! Get to the cars! Shoot from the cars! Go! Go! We can’t hold it!”

  Cheyenne and I were the last down the ladders from our level as we took parting shots at Changed climbers to cover the retreating humans. The Snapper continued ramming the barrier slowly shoving the wall and the roadblocking rigs back, foot by foot.

  Gunfire concentrated toward the flanks of the wall and the highest part where we had stood, as we ran for our lives to the waiting vehicles.

  I tripped and fell, my wounded leg giving out, Cheyenne outpacing me, feet from the Jeep; she realized I wasn’t with her and turned back.

  Smoke obscured the wall between me and it with the wind’s direction change, hissing and clicking echoing as a fast-moving slim form rushed toward me out of the smoke.

  I didn’t have time to reload my pistol.

  Crap.

  The figure coming out of the smoke was a shapely, petite, mixed black and Asian nutjob blonde in her black and blue yoga attire, running toward me and scooping me up, back onto my feet.

  “Get up sexy!” Julie made sure I was running before she turned around and fired that rubber slingshot thing back at the wall. “Ah, man! I swallowed my gum! Get moving!”

  “Shoot them as you drive away!” I yelled over the horrific din of clicks, clacks, titters, and roars mixed with sporadic gunfire.

  King was waiting in the Jeep’s backseat, shivering. Brave as he was, something had to give, and he went for cover, no shame in that.

  Diego shouted at me from his still parked car, firing back toward the wall and I ordered him to move back to the next wall, to follow the fleeing vehicles already ahead of him.

  There was a low rumble from the wall, making me look back. Four cars remained around us, the other twenty or more already departed. Two pickups, loaded with shooters in the rear, in addition to our Jeep and Julie’s green monster, were the last.

  Julie climbed into the already running monster truck as Lexi scooted over. Julie waited for us to go, two ninjas with bows in the bed of her truck. She and I exchanged a glance at the sound of rending metal.

  It was a surging wave of reeking, dark-purple, murderous ants.

  Mutated, chattering figures erupted over the section where the Snapper continued to ram. Fish men flowed out of the waters on the left side of the wall, and ran out of the dunes on the right, charging toward us, their language creating a steady rising and lowering thrum across the landscape.

  Their lust for death was not abated in the least.

  We couldn’t stand up to this. If we couldn’t hold this wall, we certainly couldn’t hold the next one. Bruxton was over. We needed to evacuate to the offshore boats.

  I grabbed the radio off the dashboard and drove with one hand as the army of Changed pursued us, the pickups ahead of us, Cheyenne shooting out the window, Julie last in line.

  “This is Taylor! Evacuate! Evacuate! Get everyone to the boats! Head to the western shore of Hatteras village by the Ferry, if you can’t load up on the east shore. Tell the big boats to go toward the Coast Guard station near the museum! Meet them at the ferry landing! Get out! Abandon the wall! Get everyone out!”

  The Changed continued their loud, thrumming language. We had never heard that many Changed moving, running, or making noise before.

  “Taylor! Oh, thank god!” My sister’s voice came over the radio, “We’ve been trying to reach you! Are you alright?”

  “Caroline! Get to the boats! Get to the boats! Get everyone out!” I shouted. “Get everyone to the Ferry landing! Tell the others at the wall to go to the pontoon boats. Go toward the lighthouse shore, or the ferry, just get out of the edge of town right now! Go!”

  “We’ve been trying to contact you! Help is on the way! Just get back here! Help is coming to you!”

  She didn’t understand the enormity of what was coming. “No one can help us! Tell them to turn back! Don’t come this way! Get them out! Listen to me! Get everyone to the boats!”

  The Changed thrum was sounding so close, how fast could these Fish men run?

  “Taylor! I’m trying to tell you! Help is on the way.”

  What kind of help could she be talking about? She can’t see the things that are coming. No reinforcement from town could help.

  The thrum reverberated through our open windows and Cheyenne started beating on the Jeep’s roof.

  “Taylor! Oh, my god! Taylor! Look! Look!” She screamed.

  The thrum roared up from behind the Jeep and passed over the roof and moved ahead of us.

  I looked up and saw a beautiful sight.

  Three Blackhawk helicopters, in formation, were banking around and heading back toward us and the pursuing horrors behind us.

  Chapter 22

  They spit fire like dragons.

  The noise of their rotors and the chatter of their machine guns cut through the raucous noise of the clicking and hissing from the enraged mutants.

  Julie’s green monster slowed behind me and stopped, then I did too, pulling over to watch. Other vehicles slowed and stopped ahead of us, some people jumping out and fist pumping the air, cheering the pilots on.

  It was nearly indescribable.

  Imagine a chainsaw plowing an already tilled field filled with rows of watermelons.

  Body parts flew haphazard through the air, the road tossed up asphalt, gravel, and sand. Shrieking Fish men and Crab men ran in terror back to the wall, to the sea, and into Pamlico sound.

  Water did not save them.

  Two of the Blackhawks remained side by side defending us, firing continuously into the streaming purple mass. Water, sand, and mud splashed in geysers on either shore as the two helicopters rocked slowly back and forth.

  The third Blackhawk flew over the wall and turned around to face the far side and the Changed Snapper. The helicopter belched fire and deafening roars from the Tank joined rising noise. Chunks of mutated flesh arced into the sky. The third Blackhawk crept slowly backwards away from the wall, maintaining its barrage, jerking wildly to the left as a tossed, lifeless, Fish man Runner soared past it. The machine gun’s bombardment ceased as the Blackhawk turned back toward Avon and commenced firing in that direction.

  The two rear Blackhawks advanced toward the wall after the fleeing mutants. Two gunners in civilian clothing and military helmets appeared in the inside facing side doors of each machine. Their weapons sounded like a giant blowing raspberries as the gunners fired in an “X” pattern. Tracer bullets cut through the diminishing sunset. The left gunner fired beneath the right helicopter, the right fired beneath the left at straggling and confused, retreating, Fish men Runners.

  Horns beeped along the line of survivor vehicles and I joined in. Cheyenne crawled off the windowsill and flew into my arms, hugging and kissing me.

  Julie and the Atkin sisters jumped out with her two Ninjas and started dancing and cheering in place. We ran to join them and added our own screams of happiness.

  Once the Blackhawks flew over the barrier, they formed a line. Two over the water on either side of the road, one in the center.

  They continued their offensive, the gunners clearing the scaffolding, wall, and shoreline.

  The gunfire ceased, while around and behind us, the
survivors cheered and screamed, horns blowing, even firing some celebratory shots into the dying sunlit sky. Diego ran up to us and joined in our celebration. Randy waved from an older Camaro along the line. I waved back, and he cupped his mouth and cheered.

  The Blackhawks?

  Once more, like dragons, they hissed and spat even more impressive and deadlier furious fire.

  Missiles launched from each Blackhawk toward the road and water. Then another. Then another.

  The fading light of the sun made the explosions illuminate the area. Flames reflecting off the remainder of the grenade smoke.

  The helicopters moved forward, holding their fire, then one would fire a missile, periodically, with further machine gun fire, or assisted gunfire from the door gunners.

  I ran back to the Jeep and grabbed the radio.

  “Caroline! Who are they? They pushed back the Changed! They pushed them back!”

  Caroline answered me while people cheered in the background at the rec center. “I told you help was coming! They heard the lighthouse message! What?” she asked someone from her end. “Okay. Taylor? The commanding officer pilot person wants to meet who’s in charge. They say they’re going to force the mutants back and meet us back at the rec center. The Alpha wall is damaged, but the monsters are in full panic heading back to Avon. The commanding officer will come while the others make sure they mop up as many as they can before joining us. They say to get some people to the wall and try to put it back together as much as-” She was interrupted by another person. “No, no, sorry, one helicopter will land on our side of the Alpha wall to defend it if they have to. One will come now to meet our leader, then another will come after.” She laughed. “That’s you. You better get back here.”

  “I’ll stay here, Sifu,” Diego said, giving me a bow. “Randy, me, Jessica, and Everett will make sure the things are dead and get some order here.”

  “Alright, yeah.” I agreed. I was bushed. I had no idea who Jessica or Everett were. “Do that, I’ll go meet the people. Take as many people as you need.” I transmitted to Randy. “Randy? Diego and, um, Jessica and Everett are going to coordinate here. Come help as much as you can.”