End of Days | Book 5 | Beyond Alpha

by Isherwood, E. E.

Zandre pulled her back, which was a good thing since she still wanted to help despite the lack of logic at joining a futile operation.

  “You can’t,” Zandre advised in her ear.

  “They’re dying,” she exclaimed.

  “They’re dead,” he said simply, still pulling her back.

  It got worse as she watched. The thing that had Bert wouldn’t let him go. He had to let go of Tim, who fell toward the creature attached to him.

  Several little salamander-like creatures came out of the sand next to the beached monster whale as if the dinner bell was clanging. They went for the bloody sand under the two men.

  The birds on top of the carcass got in on the action as both guys flailed and cried out. They flew out of reach when both fought back.

  She had no weapons to help.

  Nature opened all the spigots on its cleanup act. A rip appeared in the side of the beached corpse, and a silver tube slid out and fell to the sand. A second followed, then a flood of them came out. Each was a meter long and a few centimeters in diameter. They went for the victims.

  Like the snake creatures, they sank a ring of teeth into any piece of flesh they could find, but there was a clear instinct to burrow, which made them horrifying to watch.

  Tim went still.

  Bert was only moving a little.

  “We have to fight back!” she begged Zandre.

  “The pile!” Captain Barlow said from where he’d been standing the whole time. “We can get weapons at the pile.”

  She ran with the two men, but it was far too late to help the stricken crewmen. Destiny was positive the only reason Barlow had made the suggestion was because there was no hope for the two men, and it was for the best they put some distance between them and those scavengers.

  When she looked back, it was a feeding frenzy next to the ship-sized carcass. More of the tentacles had come out of the sand, searching for purchase on their new snacks. Those tubed killers had used sand to hide, and they’d used the exposed corpse as bait. It had been a brilliant strategy. She had to admit most of her animal and survival skills would mean almost nothing in this new land if nature had so reshuffled evolution’s cards.

  But arming herself was something she understood.

  Destiny was the first to find a long metal bar.

  She would not be surprised again.

  Twenty-One

  Colorado Springs Fringe

  Buck checked outside before opening the door. A furry brown mountain lion lounged on top of the Humvee, which still lay on its side in the middle of the street. Two others sat on the pavement, playfully tugging on what he figured was a bone—one that had once belonged to Varriss and his crew.

  “I’ll shoot everything in my way as we head back to Lorraine if I have to, but loud noises seemed to help with those hole-diggers, so maybe it will give us a head start.” Buck cracked the front door open, then aimed the shotgun at the air over the trucks. On any other day, he wouldn’t risk hitting someone downrange, but he figured the buckshot would land in the ocean if it went the distance. “Cover your ears.”

  He waited until everyone had their hands over their ears. Connie knelt next to Mac, smushing his head between her arm and chest to cradle his ears. She nodded when she was situated.

  Buck fired.

  The explosive action was hell on his ears but made the mountain lion start in fright and fall off the Humvee.

  He fired twice more.

  The bonus blasts chased off the pair chomping on the bone, but there were three others he hadn’t seen from inside the house. Those ran out from behind the Humvee to follow their leader. He had no idea if mountain lions were solitary, but the new type definitely liked hunting in a pack.

  “Come on. I think we’re clear,” he called.

  The tornado-siren cries of the twenty-foot-tall hornless rhinos made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. If one of those showed up while they were exposed and running, he wasn’t sure if all their weapons together would be enough firepower to stop it. The fifty-cal hadn’t prevented the Humvee from being tipped over.

  “Don’t stop!” he yelled as loud as he dared.

  The big cats hadn’t gone far, to his disappointment. They lurked a few yards away as if they knew a tasty treat called “humans” was restocking in their area. However, Buck estimated they wouldn’t press in so soon after having the shotgun blow out their eardrums. Just as his friends hadn’t ever seen those animals in all of human history, the animals hadn’t seen the tools of humans. It created a local stalemate.

  Mac ran up the steps and into the cabin.

  He watched Connie’s derriere as she climbed. No matter the emergency, he would always admire her beauty. It was part of Connie’s total package that he loved and relentlessly fought to protect. To serve his duty, he pushed her rump from behind.

  “Hurry!” he ordered.

  “I’m in!” she called as she went through the open door.

  His shove hadn’t been for play. The cats loped in his direction, already in the front yard of the closest house.

  “Holy crap, they’re bold,” he remarked.

  He scrambled in a half-second after Connie.

  “The lions?” she asked.

  “Yep.” He fought back the anxiety from being hunted. “Check the others while I crank her over.”

  After slamming the door and firing up Lorraine, he glanced in the mirror to see if his friends had avoided the stalkers. Eve, parked behind him, practically pushed Haley up the steps as if the girl were moving too slowly for her. She climbed in after her.

  Sparky and Monsignor were the farthest from the lions, but when they got inside their cab, the CB lit up immediately.

  “Drive!” Sparky shouted.

  Outside, the bellows continued.

  He picked up the CB. “I’m rolling.”

  Buck put it in gear.

  Eve got moving a second or two later.

  Wailing from Sparky. “It’s here!”

  Buck looked behind him as he clutched into third gear.

  Monsignor’s dual stacks belched black smoke as if he were trying to get her started, but the truck hadn’t moved an inch before the entire rig tipped forty-five degrees toward the driver’s side. Sparky, in the passenger seat, flew against the inside of the windshield.

  The rhino was crouched on the far side of Mel’s truck, working hard to push it all the way over. The truck’s large size made it difficult to see more than its giant back.

  “Holy shit!” Buck blurted.

  The truck balanced on edge for a second, then slammed back down on its tires.

  Buck spent more time looking behind than ahead. He wanted to see Monsignor get out of there.

  “Come on, Mel,” he prayed.

  Everything was still for three or four seconds. The truck appeared intact. The diesel fumes continued to spit out the side stacks. Sparky made it back into his seat. All should have been good.

  “Drive!” He willed the guy to step on it.

  A nuclear cloud of smoke shot out of the big exhaust pipes as Mel gunned the motor, exactly as Buck had imagined he would. The front grille bounced upward when the torque struck the drive train, and the tires finally started to roll forward.

  Monsignor came onto the radio. “We’re moving.”

  “Thank G—” Buck started before cutting himself off.

  A gray mass rushed the passenger side of Mel’s red truck. The whole semi lifted and rode entirely on the left tires for a second or two, but the combination of speed and tilt soon sent Monsignor into a sideways spin on the lawn of the house they’d recently escaped. His left pipe ripped into the grass a moment before the rest of the vehicle.

  “No!” Buck let his foot off the gas.

  With the truck out of the way, he got a good look at two of the big daddy rhinos. One had pushed Mel over, and a second approached from behind the first. They were even larger than the one from the pool, suggesting more of them were arriving to take care of trouble in the neighbo
rhood. Together, they converged on the stricken vehicle.

  Buck had to help.

  How do you help against house-sized animals?

  He yanked the CB up. “Eve, keep driving. Get to the front of the subdivision.”

  She didn’t need to be told. Eve’s silver semi accelerated past him as if she were going for the quarter-mile speed record.

  Buck put on the brakes.

  “Connie, don’t freak out, but I need the AR right this second.”

  She reached into the back and handed it to him.

  “She’s loaded,” he said to himself as a reminder to respect the firearm.

  When he looked back, the gigantic animal had stomped into the shattered windshield, perhaps to take out the movement it saw there.

  He pushed open his door and leaned against the jamb to brace himself. The position allowed him to aim through the scope toward the beast nosing inside the ruined cab. The first shot went down range and easily hit the barn-sized target.

  “Got you!” he gushed.

  The massive creature had been struck by a bullet in the middle of its giant body, and it did flinch with pain, but it didn’t stop what it was doing.

  Buck squeezed the trigger exactly five more times before getting the response he wanted. The animal backed out of the wrecked windshield and looked around, as if searching for who was inflicting pain on its body with the loud noises.

  When it moved aside, Buck saw into the jagged ruins of Monsignor’s cabin. Neither man was visible.

  He aimed the rifle at the boulder-sized head of the big animal, but he held back on firing. Flames emerged from the inside of the damaged Kenworth.

  “Come on, get out of there,” he urged the two men.

  He’d used bullets to make the creature stop poking around, but he didn’t want to shoot it again and cause it to do something unpredictable. He needed his friends to sneak out of the truck while it wasn’t thrusting its snout in there.

  As the fire spread, the two beasts gave it some space.

  There was no movement inside the truck.

  “It’s now or never,” he whispered.

  Ironically, the mountain lions converged on the takedown, probably thinking they could cut in, but they stayed well away from the pissed-off rhinos and the burning vehicle.

  “Did they get out?” Connie croaked.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, still holding a glimmer of hope.

  His hope didn’t last long. After half a minute, he had to give up. The destroyed truck was consumed by fire and plumes of black smoke. The two giants paced in the yard, trampling bushes and a mailbox while waiting to be sure no one came out of the blaze. The lions cleared out, as if realizing they’d made a huge mistake coming there.

  He lowered his rifle and scooted back inside the door.

  One of the big guys seemed to notice the movement. Their eyes locked from a hundred yards away.

  “Oh, shit!” he exclaimed.

  He wondered if he should fire a few rounds. However, he’d gotten a demonstration of the effectiveness of bullets when Varriss and his fifty-cal were destroyed. It was one thing to use the gun to distract it, but the AR was no fifty-cal, so the odds of it bringing the rhino down as it ran toward him were zilch. And he’d recently gotten a demonstration on truck-tipping…

  Buck slammed the door.

  “Hold on.” He tossed the gun on the floor.

  The engine was already running, so he threw it into gear.

  The rhino’s siren wail cranked up.

  “He’s tracking our movement, I think.” Buck checked the mirror and saw the gray titan break into a run. He mashed his foot through the low gears to get them on the move.

  “You want me to shoot it?” Connie reached for the rifle.

  “No, it’s going to be right up on us,” he replied. “If it sees you, it will go for you.”

  The subdivision was shaped like an oval, with the split at the start, so he figured all he had to do was drive like hell around the top of the oval and sweep down the far side. That would put him back at the beginning, where he’d told Eve to go.

  It was time to prove he could turn the circle from side to side.

  In seconds, he had the truck up to forty. Without a trailer laden with goods, his huge engine was able to put most of its horsepower on the pavement. However, the rest of the neighborhood wasn’t a sleepy, deserted village. Many of the animals he’d chased away earlier had run to different areas on the street.

  “Aw, shit,” he drawled.

  He gripped the wheel with his left hand, the shifter with his right. There was no choice but to throttle through it.

  “Watch it!” Connie complained.

  One of the smaller rhino-like beasts stood in the street, possibly as a result of chasing Eve as she’d gone through. Three or four rhino babies the size of full-grown elephants playfully rolled in some decorative bushes against the trashed siding of one of the houses. The big one began trotting toward him with its head lowered.

  He linked all the pieces together.

  “We’re a threat to Momma’s babies,” he said dryly.

  “We’re going to get sandwiched,” Connie warned.

  The one behind couldn’t do forty miles an hour, but it pursued with vigor. As he slowed to figure out the problem ahead, it went into a sprint.

  The one in front ran hard for him, too.

  “We’re not stopping,” he assured her.

  He blasted the horn in one solid blow.

  The smaller animal got to within fifty feet, but the loud noise made it look up and possibly convinced it Buck’s truck was too big to take down, so it veered off.

  Buck yanked the wheel in the opposite direction.

  They passed within a few feet of each other.

  He got them rolling straight the instant they were by.

  “Good God!” he exclaimed. “I thought we were dead.”

  The chaser stayed after them as they rounded the bend and came down the backside of the subdivision. He looked behind the houses on his left and noticed those mounds dotting the landscape. The second rhino was over there somewhere. He half-expected it to cut through the backyards and mash him in the side as he drove by.

  Numerous mountain lion lookalikes ran at his truck but dashed away at the last second. It wasn’t clear if they found the rig too scary and noisy or if they got turned off by what was trailing behind him. The two breeds did not seem to mix well.

  Once up to speed in the subdivision, there was no way the huge creature could keep pace. He put more distance between him and the animal until they came to the Y-intersection. By the time they reached Eve waiting there, the thing had veered off.

  “Holy shit.” Connie pointed. “Isn’t that Varriss?”

  He followed her finger. Varriss stumbled out from the clump of bushes and trees they’d inspected when they first arrived. The guy held his side and limped on an injured leg, but he hobbled fast to Eve’s truck.

  “Eve,” Buck said on the CB. “Can you pick him up?”

  The giants’ wails echoed through the neighborhood. He figured they’d put out an APB on his truck. If any rhino spotted a black Peterbilt, they were to attack at will. The press of time nagged at him.

  “Yes, but then we have to go.” She sounded rattled.

  “No arguments here.”

  It was lucky to find one survivor, but he thought there might be more. He blared the horn in three short bursts while he waited for Varriss to board. His hope was that Mel or Sparky would come running out of the bushes, but nothing was happening up by their tipped truck or anywhere else on the street. The second big rhino mouthed one of the front tires of Mel’s wreck and ripped it off the wheel.

  “They’re dead, Buck,” Connie said, reading his mind.

  Varriss was aboard.

  The one eating the tire turned his way.

  They were out of time.

  “I know,” he said with sadness. “Goodbye, fellas.”

  He hit the gas a
gain, went left out the exit, and put the hammer down. Eve drafted behind his rear tires as he punched through the gearbox. Neither of them was taking a chance of being caught and tipped over.

  “I’m going to break the land-speed record between Colorado Springs and Sedalia,” he said, glaring at the road ahead.

  “We’re clear from those things,” she reported after looking out her window. “They stopped at the broken-down car at the entrance.”

  “We were in their home. I think all these strange animals have been dropped into this new version of the world, and they’re trying to establish their new territories. That’s why they’re fighting like hell to keep us out.”

  “Remind you of anyone?” she said, trying to be chipper. “General Strauss might as well carry a tornado siren and tip us over like those things back there, for as hard as she’s working to create problems for us.”

  “Yeah, humans are just animals too,” he agreed.

  He did slow a little when he ran off the side of the roadway while passing the fallen rock. However, once back on flat pavement, he crushed the gas pedal to get back up to speed.

  “You’re good at driving fast,” she remarked after they were well clear of the rock.

  “I can go as fast as I want because this is a hybrid semi,” he said in a serious tone.

  “Really?” Connie seemed surprised. “A hybrid? Does this thing get good gas mileage? I never would have thought.”

  “Yeah,” he said dryly. “I run a hybrid combination of diesel and rubber, and I burn the hell out of both of ‘em.” He turned to her and broke into a wide smile.

  “You’re something else.” She shook her head in mock disappointment.

  “I’m trying to keep the rubber side down, you know?”

  Several miles later, he saw the stretch of road that was six inches underwater. He slowed a little but intended to plow through as fast as his tires would carry him.

  “Hang on,” he advised.

  He came upon the wet patch expecting it to be the same as before, but the water had gotten higher. Noticeably higher.

  At first, he tapped the brakes.

  Then he changed his mind.

  “We aren’t stopping.”

  Alpha Site