The ground team raced from building to building, deploying its small arsenal of motion sensors, automatic sentry cannons, land-mines, anti-aircraft rocket platforms, and auto-deploy aerial drones.
“Long-range comms’re still spotty,” Gajah said, fiddling with a V-plat. Patrick could feel his anxiety rising with every minute they stayed. He keyed a message into his wrist-plat and set it to transmit as soon as bandwidth became available.
[Blacksburg Command Center: Assault Confirmed]
[Facility Lost: All Personnel KIA/MIA]
[No Hostiles Present]
[Automated Security Active]
[Evac = 10 Minutes]
As he finished the message, the delivery drone carrying the canister behind him leapt fifty feet straight up with a puff and a whiny-hiss, before a whoosh-bang sound sent it rocketing into the thick white clouds above. The dragon-fire jump-jet circled overhead, cannons oscillating, as the two bull-sharks groaned back to life, tremored, and swayed off the ground again.
Chapter 43: Battle Homeward
(Alias Goodwell)
Alias Goodwell fought back tears and the urge to vomit, if only to avoid losing face with his battle-hardened caretakers. Their faces were stoic, as was Ben’s, though he thought he sensed some measure of anguish behind the callous expressions. They’d all lived through unspeakable things, but he couldn’t imagine they had seen anything like the horror in the Salt Lake City Migrant Assistance Center.
Alias had only seen images like that in the grainy movies and colorized pictures of his studies with Minister Joshua. The Armenian Genocide. The Holocaust. The Bosnian War. The Rwandan Genocide. The Syrian War. The Sino-Russian slaughter. The aftermath of the Quad-Bomb Attack. The Palestinian cleanse. The Georgian Program. The Water Wars and the two Migrant Massacres. Now this—whatever it was.
Men, women, and children lined up and shot. Others gunned down at the gates as they ran to save themselves. Rail cars filled with desperate migrants burned alive. Pools of blood congealing on the hot cement. Bone fragments, chunks of flesh, dismembered bodies. Limbs. Feet. Hands. Hundreds more asphyxiated by gas. Not a single soul—of thousands—spared.
The smell of death, burnt bodies, and gunpowder lingered stubbornly in his nostrils. He climbed back into the back seat of Hunter Giant, directly behind Ben. Like the others, Alias forced himself not to look out the window for fear of seeing more of the carnage that had spilled out of MAC’s containment walls. He focused instead on the fleeting patterns of buildings in the fog-like smoke drifting slowly around their enfeebled convoy.
“The church’s only a few minutes away,” he stammered as they bounced over potholes and rubble in the crumbling streets, which were eerily empty, save for a few ghostly residents braving the streets for vital necessities. They looked like they hadn’t slept in days as they trudged, bleary-eyed, onto the narrow, pocked sidewalks. Their ramshackle homes—patched together from packing crates, pallets, cinderblocks, corrugated steel, and junked cars—seemed to smolder under the shanty’s tattered canopies. The threadbare sails, a feeble attempt to keep the sun from turning their homes into ovens, flapped high over the streets and rusted rooftops, now veils for those cowering in the upper floors.
“Up here on the left,” Alias added haltingly as the convoy snaked down another mostly abandoned street.
“Hunters,” Ben relayed, “we’re turning off here. Gear up.”
“Why the fuck are we stopping here?” Sean Burger’s voice crackled over the speaker, with all the derision and bile Alias had come to expect from the viscous little man.
“Calm down, Burger.” Ben was unphased. “GEO doesn’t show any action here.”
“You still trust that goddamned thing?” Burger spat. “It’s been hacked so bad by the slant eyes and cabbage-eaters—and God-knows-who else—it’s just as likely to send us off a cliff as find us a safe spot.”
“GEO’s what we got, Burger.” Ben was getting exasperated.
“The church’ll have supplies,” Alias chimed.
“Oh goodie,” croaked Burger. “Our precious little do-gooder thinks it’ll be safe. What a relief. Well, we’ve only lost half our guys, so why-the-fuck not follow him. If we get shwacked in there, and I make it out alive, I’m gonna take your sister for myself, boy.” Alias clenched his fists and bit the inside of cheek to contain his anger.
“That’s enough, Burger, you fuck-tard. I’m in command, and this is where we’re stopping. …You just bought yourself sentry duty.”
The convoy pulled onto a small gravel pathway and approached the gate of the walled church, a converted bank with pocked and cracked marble columns and granite steps.
“Minister Sanchez’ll help us make—”
Alias paused in disbelief at the sight of the church, its gate hanging open, squealing as it drifted in the hot breeze, scorch marks above the blown-out windows.
“Well, I’ve already seen enough,” Burger grumbled.
Ben turned around with a dubious look. Alias telegraphed his determination to go inside, though it was now as much about finding Olivia Sanchez as anything else. Ben sighed in resignation.
“We need a break,” Ben said at last. “Desiree needs a break and medicine. The walls will give us enough cover to rest and make repairs. We’ll see if there’s anything left inside that can help us. Burger, you wait with the vehicles. Take down anything that comes near us.”
Ben then handed out orders to everyone in the squad. Security. Scavenging. Sentry duty.
“Felipe, get some drones in the air. I don’t want to be taken by surprise.”
He should have gone into the Expeditionary Force, Alias thought admiringly of Ben. He would’ve made a great officer, if only he’d been from the right caste.
Alias followed Ben inside once the advance team gave the all-clear. But his relief died as soon as he passed through the entryway, when he saw Minister Sanchez laying open-eyed, but dead, on the alter. Her robe was still hiked up to her waist, blood smeared on her inner thighs. A single bullet hole gaped in her forehead. Alias couldn’t choke back the nausea anymore, doubling over and throwing up on the fragments of statues and broken pews strewn over the ancient stone floors. He shook violently, and a flood of pent-up tears broke through and poured down his cheeks.
“W-Why?! Why would anyone do this? She never hurt anyone!”
Alias knew crimes were no prerequisite for rape and murder. But defiling Olivia Sanchez—a woman he’d known his entire life to be holy, selfless, and forgiving—and leaving her on a church alter was more than he could bear.
Alias felt Ben lean down and put a gentle hand on his back as the other mercenaries turned away from the breakdown. Alias grasped Ben’s arm and followed him out of the room to the adjoining vestry, where he collapsed in a heap, sobbing.
Ben sat down next to Alias, draped an arm over his heaving shoulders, and stroked his hair.
“Relax here for a few minutes,” Ben said softly, fishing through his pockets for a pill, which he handed to Alias with his canteen. “Take this. It’ll take the edge off.”
Alias eagerly choked down the pill with a gulp of tepid water, though it felt like his throat was closed shut. He laid down on his side and closed his eyes as Ben knelt beside him and stroked his hair until his hyperventilating subsided.
Alias felt himself drifting down a dark tunnel toward a far-off glowing light. The horrible images of destruction and murder began to melt into the blackness, like phantoms releasing their terrible grip.
Alias wasn’t sure how long he’d been out when his merciful respite came to an abrupt end, and he woke with a start. Ben was hovering over him, this time shaking him firmly, all hints of gentleness replaced by frantic urgency. The light in the room burned his eyes, but Alias could sense he was coming-to far too slowly. Ben was relentless in shaking him, and the crackle of gunfire crept into Alias’ consciousness. He forced himself to his feet and clutched the rifle Ben forced into his hands.
Ben pulled him by the arm, but
they had only gone a few steps when an enormous BANG! rocked the room. The few unbroken windows shattered, spraying the room with shards of glass and dust. Ben forced him down behind a column, where they stayed crouched for a moment. Alias’ head was swimming when Ben again grabbed his sleeve and pushed them toward the entrance. They flew into the small courtyard and ducked behind their battered vehicles. Burger was crouched behind the church wall, popping up every few seconds to send a few symbolic bursts at their unseen attackers. The clitter-clack of gunfire echoed through the streets, and the terrifying Snap-Pop! of whizzing bullets made Alias’ heart thump in his chest.
Ben foisted Alias into the backseat of Hunter Mammoth. Alias, who was tired of being manhandled like a ragdoll, swiped himself free from Ben’s clutches. He then wished he hadn’t, as he felt completely exposed in the truck—especially as bullets clattered off its thin armor. He took some comfort in seeing Felipe already in the immersive command sphere, his smooth and effortless darting and swiping commands to the drones conveying a reassuring calm and concentration. Alias had never seen anyone so skilled in immersive virtual reality as Felipe, who never seemed to get disoriented by the out-of-body sensation that gave most people vertigo.
He had no time to admire Felipe’s focus, though, as the vehicles revved to life and the convoy charged out of the church’s courtyard and careened onto the narrow streets. Alias shuddered when he turned around to see the church erupt in flames and the Chunk-Chunk-Chunk of Cobb Tomason firing the .50-cal in Hunter Giant just in front of them. Felipe’s drone darted overhead, tracers from its mini-gun streaming along their flanks, and Alias caught his first sight of their attackers—fleeting silhouettes in windows and in the rubble. He glimpsed speeding attack vehicles running parallel to their convoy, one block over on both sides. Then a flock of pocket aerial drones passed overhead, spraying their vehicle again with bullets.
Holy shit, he thought, this was no random ambush. They’re chasing us!
He peered forward, hoping to see some hint of hope ahead. Hunter Tail, now in the lead, was speeding through the streets, kicking up dust and debris, which bounced up and ricocheted off their windshield. Thankfully, Ben was unphased, racing close behind the lead vehicle.
As they finally emerged onto the highway and picked up speed, Alias began to think they might make it. He could see their pursuers more clearly. Three makeshift assault vehicles, the variety used by common road raiders. Two snake-eaters, military grade, but unmarked. There were two small flocks of aerial drones, one of them far too advanced for marauders by his reckoning. With their enemies now visible, Ben’s crew honed their firing to better effect, but the swarming drones were relentless, and their alternating passes forced Ben’s gunners to abandon their turrets.
“Our drones are gone,” Felipe shouted, pulling his helmet off in frustration.
“EMP grenades,” Ben replied. “Hit ‘em on the next pass.”
“At this range, that’ll knock us out too!” protested Felipe. “We’ll be turned turtles!”
“No choice. We’re dead if they keep coming at us. EMPs—now!”
Alias nearly warned them that EMPs were banned—and using them was punishable by death. But he bit his tongue, figuring Ben knew better than anyone how close they were to perishing, and his fear was dwarfed by his awe at the commanding posture of his erstwhile lover.
Ben again lowered the truck’s periscope and activated its mortar-cannons. He unlocked a steel box in the truck’s walls and pulled out three shinny metal grenades, stuffing each into the mortar-cannon tubes.
“Hunter Pack. EMP imminent. Disconnect electronics on my mark!” He turned to Felipe, who now sat nervously at a small console with a joy stick. “You got their path?” Felipe nodded reluctantly. “Do it.”
Felipe pulled the trigger, unleashing a muted Thunk-chah . . . Thunk-chah . . .Thunk-chah.
“EMPs away,” Felipe announced unhappily.
“Kill it,” Ben shouted into his comms mic, and with a few switches flicked and buttons pushed, their vehicle went dark and quietly decelerated. For the next few moments—what seemed to Alias like a lifetime—there was complete silence.
Then a flash of white light and a distant, oddly cheerful Pop . . . Pop. . . Pop, followed by the sad whistling-whine of hapless metal wings tearing through the air. Alias peered up into the sky to see two gray triangle shapes spiraling downward. Then a series of deep thuds, mixed with the sound of twisting metal and shattering plastic.
They all sat perfectly still in their dead truck, staring at each other in disbelief, until the clitter-clack of bullets forced them back into action. Ben and Felipe raced to reconnect their electronics and restart the truck. Alias watched their counterparts in the other vehicles scrambling as well.
Jenny Akindele popped out of the hatch in Hunter Giant at the rear, spun the turret, and unleashed the.50-cal machine gun on their fast-approaching pursuers. Cobb Tomason was still firing from Hunter Mammoth.
We need to get the hell out of here.
One enemy truck sat still behind them, drained by the EMP. But two more whipped around it and were nearly upon Alias’ still-motionless convoy, guns blaring. Cobb’s neck snapped back violently, half his head scattering in a mist of blood, skull, and brains. A line of holes appeared in Alias’ door, and the tinted window shattered beside him.
Turned turtles. Alias now got the metaphor. We’re fucked.
Alias nevertheless readied his rifle, pointed it out his now-open window, and squinted to see through the glare. The enemy was almost upon them, but he was determined to go down fighting. He swallowed hard and started counting down, willing himself to muster the courage to fire.
Three—two—one. To his own surprise, he made good on his intent, holding his breath, squeezing the trigger, and nearly falling to the floor from the recoil. He climbed back to his spot and fumbled his rifle back into firing position, when one of the raider vehicles exploded in a ball of fire, smoke, and hurling fragments. Then another disintegrated in a blast that made him flinch, just as a shadow flitted overhead.
He shielded his eyes, scanning the blue sky for some clue of what was happening, and a dragon-fire gunship raced by overhead, flanked by three drones and a bull-shark combat transport ship. Three assault buggies then sped past, firing relentlessly at their attackers. Alias cast a bewildered look at Felipe, who just shrugged his shoulders before returning to his frantic work to get the truck going again. The buggies circled their wounded convoy, firing madly at their attackers, as the airships’ brown exhaust trailed off into the distance.
At last, their truck whirred and roared to life. Alias couldn’t remember being so relieved—until Ben leapt from the driver’s seat and charged over open ground to Hunter Giant, which was still dark and unmoving. In the same instant, Felipe was out the door, on his way to get Hunter Tail up and running.
And then it was over. The last of their attackers fled back towards Albuquerque. The Hunter Pack vehicles rumbled to life again, and one of their saviors’ buggies stopped near Ben for a chat that seemed unnaturally calm given the circumstances. The idea of standing in the open road—vehicles working or not—struck him as the height of folly.
Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, you stupid fuckers, he muttered to himself. Even when Ben and Felipe started back to the truck, Ben rotating his finger above his head to signal their imminent departure, Alias felt like they were deliberately moving too slowly. He leaned back in his chair so they wouldn’t see his frustration—and fear—though he really wanted to lean out the shattered window and let loose a stream of profanity.
Ben glanced in through the window to check that Alias was still alive where he’d left him. Satisfied with the result, Ben calmly got behind the wheel, pulled on his helmet and adjusted his mic. To Alias’ chagrin, Ben didn’t seem to notice—much less care about—his irritation.
“Hunter Pack. We’re moving. Hunter Three out.” Ben then turned around to Alias. “Buckle up.”
Go fuck yourself, Alia
s thought, though he immediately complied with Ben’s direction.
His belt buckle had just clicked when Ben punched the accelerator, and they moved forward at a terrifying speed, careening around the twists and turns of the winding road. Alias steeled himself from the wind rushing in through his window, trying to keep a vigilant eye. Ben had told him that missing a shadow or shiver on the road could get them all killed, so like the others he searched the line of thirsty shrubs and ruined farm houses for any sign of movement.
They passed patches where trees once towered—some their remnant branches reaching fecklessly at the sky like the hands of ashen skeletons. He admired the scraggly bushes that broke through the layered rocks and sand. Albuquerque out of view, he caught sight of an old Route 25 road sign, a rusted remnant of High Times. He remembered that very sign from his youth crisscrossing this country evangelizing. Bored out of their minds on the interminable treks to spread the word of God, he and his sister played name-games with the signs. His heart ached for those lost days of boredom, but at least he could mark their progress on the way home.
Route 25 to Bernalillo. North to Farmington. Shiprock, Monticello, Crescent Junction. Green River, Spanish Fork, Provo. Then the home stretch to Park City. Could get there some time after midnight, if we don’t stop.
They had to stop, though, and sooner than he expected. The expanded convoy milled around the intersection with highway 85 and 550 at Bernalillo for half an hour before hurriedly getting back to their vehicles and speeding away as the intersection erupted in flames as they departed. A dizzying mix of confusion, anger, suspicion, betrayal, and fear swished in Alias’ head, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask questions, and Ben offered no explanation.
No one said a word for the next seven hours to Crescent Junction, where the convoy stopped, and its soldiers charged around like angry ants for half an hour. The church there allegedly abandoned, he was told. Again, Ben’s soldiers loaded back up and headed down the old interstate 70 as the intersection eastward exploded in the rear-view mirror.
Fire, Ruin, and Fury (Embers Saga) Page 48