by Maxey, Phil
“Rose!”
“I’m here! There’s something… Wings and arms, it… attacking a semi.”
“Get out of there!”
An engine roar came from the radio. “I’m pulling away, it’s still attacking the truck! I’ve never seen anything like it, not even in the broadcasts.”
Ben came out of the bedroom with his coat and sneakers on, and two go bags in his hands. The third was on his back already.
“How far are you from the center? Over,” said Grant.
“Maybe five minutes. Over.”
“We’ll meet you there. Over.”
“I got another twelve gauge in my pickup,” said Ethan.
Grant took the bags from his son and threw them both over his shoulders. As everyone moved through the doorway he looked back at the apartment which had become home and wondered if he would see it again.
Outside the siren relentlessly played its looping call to arms, while other sounds, car alarms, the drumming of traffic and helicopter blades were audible below it.
“We’ll follow behind!” said Ethan as he and Carrie jumped into a white pickup parked behind Grants. Behind that another light brown pickup sat with another two more of the team.
Grant climbed into his driver’s seat, while Ben ran around and jumped in the other side. Soon they were all pulling out of the apartment complex and onto the winding street heading east.
“What was the thing that Rose saw?” said Ben.
“I don’t know.” He flicked his head towards his son. “You are no more then five feet from me at all times, no matter what happens. You got that?”
Ben nodded.
“Have you got that?” he said louder.
“Yes.”
Should have trained him with the Glock, he thought. He was going to start in a few days time. Take him to one of the ranges nearby. He thought he had more time. Attacks on the walls had been increasing, but only slowly. Nothing the military couldn’t take care of.
“It’ll be okay. We’ll help Rose, then we will head back inside the inner cordon around the University.”
The pickup skidded around a corner onto one of the similar suburban streets. Cars sped in the opposite direction, including a number of Humvee’s. A sand colored church bordered by palm trees and a line of people outside, flashed by, but he couldn’t tell if they were trying to get inside or leaving.
“I’m at the center, Grant. Over,” said Rose from his radio. “Going—”
Screeches’ came from the speaker.
“Rose?” he said, while accelerating and steering around a blue coupe.
“Look!” said Ben, pointing to the distance.
Creatures as big as cars and wings which stretched three times as large were trying to pull people from a crowd that was running along the sidewalk. One of the E.L.F’s wings got caught in power lines which it turned on and started to attack.
They were heading straight for them. Instinctively Grant swung the pickup to the right, moving the three vehicles down a narrower road, but one that appeared devoid of imminent danger. As they sped past people running in the same direction he tried again on the radio.
“Rose? Come in. Over.”
“I’m here! I’m inside with the patients and the staff. There are winged E.L.F’s all over. How far out are you? Over.”
“Almost there. Over.”
Grant took the next left, correcting their route which luckily still seemed clear, but needed to swerve around a number of large trash containers that were strewn across the street.
“Stop!” Shouted Ben.
Grant slammed on the breaks without fully knowing why, but then a column of APC’s roared past at the junction they just skidded into. On the last desert colored vehicle passing by, he pushed hard down on the gas and they flew across the road.
Two and three-story apartment blocks fought for space with single story homes, most with boarded up windows and barbed wire blocking access to them.
A sudden shuddering heralded dark shapes sliding across the bright blue sky above them.
“Apaches flying towards the wall,” said Grant. He wondered what was happening there, but pushed it from his mind. One problem at a time.
“We’re almost—”
“Grant?” said Rose in a hushed tone.
The small convoy turned into the road which had a parking lot and two buildings behind it. One rectangular in shape, the other taller with a large green sign that told them they were at the right place.
Grant recognized Rose’s light green sedan parked outside double glass doors.
“We’re here!” he said into his radio.
The three pickups screeched to a halt near the entrance and he jumped out, then realized Ben was doing the same. “Stay in in the pickup!”
Ben looked surprised. “But you said—”
“Stay here!”
Ben nodded and got back on the seat.
Grant went to move towards the darkened glass of the doors, but saw Rose was on the other side waving and pointing to his left.
“Err… Boss,” said Ethan behind him.
He hadn’t noticed on arriving, but a large overturned van sat squarely in the center of the road some thirty yards from where they were. He couldn’t see the back as it was facing away from them, but something inside it was making a lot of noise.
The vehicle shook and a number of metal cylinders flew out the back.
Ethan raised his rifle. “We can take this thing.”
“No, everyone inside.” Grant half turned, wanting to keep watch on the crashed white van, and waved his other hand for Ben to get out of the pickup, which he did, closing the door quietly. Grant stepped backwards. “Ethan, Carrie, everyone inside.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The clatter from M4’s filled the air on top of the apartment block Bass was stationed on. He and the eight soldiers with him were crouched down behind the sacks of sand, while giant flying lizards swooped overhead.
“So that’s what a dragon looks like,” said a young dark-haired man close to Bass, whose uniform looked two sizes too big.
“They look more dinosaurs,” said a similarly aged female soldier next to him.
“Stop firing!” Bass shouted across the rooftop to another group of soldiers. “Wait until they are within range!”
At least the siren has stopped, he thought. Sofia flashed into his mind. He had no idea how she was doing, or a way to get in touch. He shook his head silently swearing about not getting a radio for her, but since the cellular networks went down, two-way radios had become more expensive than gold.
“Sarg, you need to see this,” said Rogers, a tall man nearby. He stood with his binoculars resting on the top of the hessian wall, looking towards the east.
Bass stood, walking past the others while taking glances into the sky, which thankfully were now clear. He arrived near the private, looking in the same direction as him. “Oh… shit,” he said. Rogers handed him the eyepieces, but the battle that was taking place amongst the haze seven miles off was obvious.
He held the binoculars to his eyes and turned the focus dial to better define what was happening on the coast. At first he thought he was looking at strangely shaped buildings, but then one of them moved, making him tense and jolt back.
“You see them?” said Rogers.
“I see them.” He also saw puffs of smoke and orange balls of flame rising up around the intruders from the sea.
“They gotta be over a hundred feet in height!”
“Be calm private, the Marines will take care of them. Whatever the fuck they are.”
A few miles to the east Grant looked through the smoked glass of the medical center’s entrance. The thing inside the truck hadn’t shown itself yet, despite the amount of machinery that had been ejected from the back.
“We can’t keep the five patients alive if we stay here any longer Grant. We need to get them to the facility at the university,” said Rose.
“We’re leaving. But we h
ave to be real quiet.” He looked back past her, to another doctor and three nurses. Each of their faces was glistening. He then looked back outside and shook his head. He hoped the creature inside the truck would get bored and leave, but now he wondered if it had fallen asleep or something for no sound came from that direction.
“The usual?” said Ethan standing next to him, looking in the same direction.
“Yup. Tell Carrie I want her and Dillon with me getting the gurneys into the back of the pickups. You take Jay, if that thing makes an appearance you know what do.”
Ethan nodded and handed the shotgun he was carrying to Grant, then disappeared back into the lobby behind them.
Grant turned to Rose. “We’re going to do it in two runs. Two gurneys with a few nurses, then the rest. There’ll be two long guns on the truck, and myself and two others will be covering the patients. You ready?”
She nodded as Ethan and Jay, a middle-aged vet, walked past, pushing the glass door open slowly, then walked outside.
Rose stiffened her back and passed on the plan to the other staff. He wanted to hug her but instead he looked to Ben. “Stay here. Don’t go outside until I tell ya, okay?”
His son nodded.
Grant turned back to the bright lot outside and watched Ethan moved around to the right, while Jay, moving as fast as his heavy set build would allow him, jogged across the concrete and took up station behind a husk of a red sedan, which was propped up on blocks and without windows.
He looked over his shoulder and Rose nodded. Two nurses, each with an occupied gurney also tilted their heads.
Grant pushed the doors open, holding one, while Dillon, a tall red-haired man held the other. Rose and the first nurse pushed an elderly woman whose eyes were closed, forward, across the threshold and into the lot. Carrie ran alongside.
As the gurneys rattled Grant watched the truck like a hawk, expecting a monster to come flying out of the back, but nothing moved.
As the first group reached the back of the nearest pickup and started loading the gurneys into it, he turned and beckoned the next three. The young doctor with the name tag ‘Dr. L Sanchez’ gulped.
Then the screaming started. Grant whipped around and immediately saw the source of danger. A creature which belonged in the pages of one of Ben’s comics was coming around the back of the flipped truck. Clawed hands, which appeared to operate in a strangely human fashioned gripped the back of it, creating dimples in the sheet metal. Then came a wing, batlike in nature, then a scale covered torso, then a head which belonged on a Komodo dragon. Worse of all was that it had legs, which allowed this impossible creature to walked upright… like a human.
It looked towards the group of vehicles, opening its jaw and revealing rows of teeth and a tongue which tasted the air. It went to move forward when a boom rang out, and a bullet ripped through one of its wings. It turned towards Ethan and produced a sound that Grant had never heard from an animal before. A kind of guttural screech. It then surged forward in his friends direction.
“Now! Come on!” Grant shouted to those behind him.
The gurneys clattered forward as more booms rang out, now joined by the sounds of semi-automatic rifles.
Grant pushed the first patient, Ben sticking to his side, while the doctor took the second and the nurse the third. They rushed across the sandy ground and banged into the pickups. The others were converging on the creature which was swishing its wings around it. It staggered back as the volume of projectiles slammed into it but it was obvious that some of the shots weren’t penetrating its natural armor.
“Keep your distance!” Grant shouted towards some of his group that were getting too confident. He had already lost two in his team in the past month to just such a sentiment. The thing fell to the ground, but a tail which stretched at least ten feet in length sliced through the air trying to catch one of its attackers.
The final gurney was slid into the back of Grants pickup with Rose nearby, while the doctor and nurses sat in the beds of the others with their patients.
“Leave it! We’re going!”
Dillon smiled. “Nah, I’m gonna put it down, Boss!” Then walked closer, aiming his M4 at the things head.
Jay ran back across the road.
“Just leave—”
Before Grant could finish, a green black shape flashed past his vision and blood sprayed upon Carrie and Ethan who were near where Dillon was, except he wasn’t there anymore.
“In the sky!” shouted Rose.
Everyone looked up. Another of the creatures had the bloody body of Dillon who was already dead, and was biting into him while hovering. Its fifteen foot wings beating hard about thirty feet above the ground.
“Ethan! Carrie!” shouted Grant.
They both ran and jumped into the driver’s seat of their respective vehicles, while he did the same to his. Ben was already in the passenger’s side and each pickup roared across the lot and back onto the street.
*****
Palm trees and homes with large front yards rushed past Sofia. She wasn’t driving, but that was fine. Next to her was Vincent Bryant the eighteen-year-old son to the couple in the front seats. Conrad and Claudia. There used to be a fourth member of the Bryant family, but six weeks prior an E.L.F took Rachel, the Bryant’s fifteen-year-old daughter from them. So now they were heading east towards the wall, towards payback.
As the residences became more sparse, and the green and beige fields more expansive, Sofia thought about her parents, and what they would say if they could see her heading towards possible, okay probable death. Her dad might be proud, but her mother would be angry. Telling her that they were now in her heart, and no amount of slaughter of the monsters would bring them back. She would be right of course, but killing the creatures was the only solace Sofia had found since she arrived in the camp. She had no choice if she wanted to stay sane in this increasingly insane world.
Booms were the audible evidence of the black smoke which was rising on the other side of the light gray strip which was a few miles off.
“Remember Vince, we stick together. Right?” said Conrad.
“Yeah, I got it.”
Their son looked out the window on his side, seemingly lost in his own memories.
“Same goes for you Sofia,” said Claudia. “Don’t be running off half cocked. We take out as many as we can, then we head back.”
“This ain’t no suicide mission,” continued Conrad.
“I know, and I won’t.” She thought about Bass, wondering if he was on any section of the wall doing his duty. Perhaps even near where they were heading. She frowned. He would agree with her mother.
She looked at her own rifle and patted her right side pocket for the ammo residing there, then her left for the blade on her hip.
They drove onto a dirt track, one of many that the construction crews had created. The sound of battle was now interspersed with roars and squeals. They were heading towards a service tunnel which ran under section eighteen. Conrad knew about it by the fact that it was his company that had built this part of the barrier protecting the camp. One of a number of sections not built by the military who just didn’t have the time to get the whole camp protected quickly enough so civilians contractors were used to fill in the gaps.
They moved diggers and blocks of concrete as they approached the wall, now looming over them. The pickup slid to a halt on the sand. Sofia got out, her heart audible in her head despite every molecule of air being bounced around by the fury of noise just fifty feet away.
Conrad, a stout man in his forties, stood holding his M4 in one hand. He looked at the others. “Final weapons check. From here on, safety’s are off. And know where your extra magazines are.”
Everyone did as asked.
“Right. We stay close to the tunnel entrance on the other side and take out what’s within range.” He looked at Vince. “No going further out!”
Vince frowned, but nodded as well in agreement.
Sofia noticed Con
rad take a deep breath, and his wife briefly squeezed his hand. They both then appeared to say something under their breath and walked forward. Vince followed. Sofia looked up at the wall which stretched for miles north and south. Along a number of points gun emplacements had been built, and were continuously opening up on whatever was on the other side.
As she followed the others, pangs of doubt started to eat into her mind. Finding the occasional E.L.F that was rummaging through the trash of an abandoned home was one thing, but what was happening on the other side of the wall sounded like a full blown battle. She was not a soldier, she worked in an office, doing accounts.
But then wholesale slaughter of E.L.F’s… That was an opportunity she couldn’t miss out on.
They approached a circular hole in one of the ten foot high blocks that formed the base of the wall. Conrad already had a key out and slid it into the padlock, unlocking then pulling the chain from the gate. Opening it revealed a dark round tunnel, which they had to bow slightly to enter. In the distance a small spot of light heralded the other side and the melee that was happening there.
Conrad pulled the gate closed behind them, but didn’t put the chain back on.
“You’re not locking it?” said Sofia.
He shook his head. “No one’s coming up here, especially not right now. And I want to be able to get out without any delays.”
Sofia nodded. Conrad and his family had killed over forty E.L.F’s by their reckoning. He knew what he was doing.
The light at the end of the tunnel blinked and a repeating thudding noise echoed off the curved surfaces, as if a horse had just run past the other gate.
“Let’s go,” said Conrad leading them all forward.
The air inside the confined space was warm and dry and Sofia realized she had left her water bottle back in the pickup. Not a problem. She was sure she wouldn’t be out there long enough for that to be an issue anyway.
After a minute of walking they could see shrubs and sand inside the bright disc, which was the world outside the camp. And noise. Squeals, roars and even what sounded like screams, but Sofia was sure there were no soldiers outside the walls. Which meant some of the E.L.F’s were strangely human sounding.