The Trashman

by William Alan Webb

  Cynthia cleared her throat and tapped the microphone to get everyone’s attention. Once the crowd quieted, she repeated my message word for word, and then stabbed the air to indicate a burly, bearded guy in the front row on the far right.

  “Are you the traitor?” she said with the perfect mix of contempt and demand.

  Although outweighing her by more than 120 pounds, his face went ashen and he shook his head like a kindergartner who’d taken an extra cookie and been caught.

  “Speak up!”

  “No, I ain’t the traitor. No, Assistant Director, I ain’t the traitor.”

  He repeated the words, including her title. Cynthia glanced at me and I gave a curt nod; his aura was green. He sighed audibly when she moved on. By the time she got to the fifth person in the front row, I knew the identity of our rat.

  Sitting in the sixth row, fourth from the left, was a short, lithe man of perhaps 25, dressed like everyone else in camo and body armor, and armed with a 40mm grenade launcher slung under a short-barreled shotgun. With danger signals ringing inside my head like bells in a fire station, I studied his aura. It only took a fraction of a second to see him surrounded by black fringed with red. That’s when he must have sensed my attention because he caught my eyes, and, without hesitating, brought the shotgun to his shoulder and aimed right at Cynthia. If he fired, the shotgun’s report would blow out the eardrums of the man sitting in the next row.

  “Nobody move or the bitch dies,” he cried, his accented voice echoing off the walls. I marked him as Northern Iranian, or maybe Azerbaijani.

  The twins flanked him with pistols ready. The mercs behind and to either side pressed the barrels of guns into his flesh, and I could see his aura turning brighter red. He was about to panic, and as much as I didn’t want Cynthia to take a grenade to the chest, it wasn’t lost on me that I stood only three feet away from her. Still with my arms folded I lifted my left hand in a “wait” gesture.

  “Nobody’s dying!” I yelled. “Everybody lower your weapons.”

  “You heard him,” Cynthia said, without the slightest quaver in her voice. “Put them down. Let’s hear what Yusif has to say.”

  At ground level I wouldn’t have had a target. The dais allowed me to see over some of the crowd between us, even so the path my bullet would have to take measured less than two inches square, and that was when everything lined up right. Nervous people shuffling and trying to look around didn’t help. Complicating things, I didn’t want to kill the man, not until we had a chance to question him about the coming attack. All of these factors and more raced through my mind, and without hesitating I drew the P320 and fired one round.

  Kaval drove my actions to inhuman speed. The bullet left the Sig’s barrel as the muscles controlling Yusif’s trigger finger reacted to an impulse from his brain to fire the grenade launcher. If he squeezed the trigger before my round struck or I missed, then Cynthia and I were dead.

  But I don’t miss.

  The 9mm slug struck the second knuckle of his right forefinger, severing the top half and releasing pressure on the trigger. Screaming, Yusif rocked back as multiple hands grabbed him and the shotgun. It took Cynthia Witherbot, the twins, and me to stop his erstwhile comrades from ripping him to shreds with their bare hands.

  I took over without asking. Grilling people like Yusif, with my life on the line, had once been so common a part of my daily routine that it became boring. I dragged Yusif to the front corner and shoved my pistol under his chin.

  “Azerbaijani?” I said.

  He nodded, showing no fear. Whatever his cause or motivation, Yusif was a true believer.

  “So, here’s how this works, Yusif. I ask a question and you answer it. If you lie, I will know, and I will shoot you right here, right now. Your brains will look like a Jackson Pollock painting on that wall you’re leaning against. Are we clear?”

  “If you thinking you’re scaring me, you’re not.”

  “Not afraid to die, huh?”

  “No.”

  “You do know those seventy-two virgins are all old and wrinkled, right?”

  “I’m Orthodox Catholic, not Muslim. But I stand in solidarity with my Muslim brothers when it comes to eliminating the hell that is America. This nation is an affront in the eyes of God.”

  “But God approves of you lying and deceiving and making His judgments for him? You people are all so tiresome,” I said. The crowd had edged closer and heard Yusif’s words, and I had to wave them back to silence as they yelled for his blood. “You think we aren’t ready for today’s attack? They’re walking into a trap. We’ve already got an ambush laid, which is why I’m here with you and not topside watching the slaughter. They don’t need me up there.”

  I hoped I hadn’t overplayed it.

  “You’re bluffing.”

  I shrugged. “If it makes you feel better to think so. Do you want me to kill you now, or let you see all your dead friends first, and then kill you?”

  “You’d never kill somebody in cold blood.”

  I laughed then and it was genuine, not done for effect. Stalin nailed it when he called people like Yusif “useful idiots.”

  “That’s sort of my job description, dumbass, killing people. And as rule I don’t give them a chance to defend themselves if I can help it. All I want to know from you is the timing of today’s operation. See, I have a barbeque planned for tonight and need to know what time for people to show up. If you do that for me now, so I can firm up my plans, I’ll turn you over to the American justice system. It’ll be five years before you even come up for trial.”

  Now it was his turn to laugh. Unlike mine, his was forced.

  “Timing won’t matter. No ambush is going to stop that herd, not if you’ve got a battalion of tanks. You’re a fool if you think you can.”

  I pulled the trigger. The top blew off his head in a spray of brains, bone, and blood. The result looked more like a Jackson Pollock forgery, rather than the real thing. Whirling to Cynthia I spit out the words.

  “Ropocos,” I said. Pushing through the crowd I headed for the doorway. Over my shoulder I shouted the rest of it. “They’re almost here!”

  Chapter 27

  I sprinted for the heavy-lift elevator at the end of the hallway. It could hold twenty fully equipped troops and was on standby for transporting the strike team to ground level after the meeting ended. Piled beside the door were two open crates of a weapon I had plenty of experience with, both stamped “Granatgevär M48.” In American military parlance, they were the ubiquitous M3E1 Multi-role Anti-armor Anti-personnel Weapons System, or Carl Gustav. Firing an 84mm round, packed on top was a variety of ammunition types. I snatched one and tucked three rounds of High-Explosive Dual-Purpose into my armpit.

  The sense of danger was so strong now it was palpable, a substance-like spray foam that burned inside my brain. Without waiting for the others, I punched the button marked “Surface.”

  The elevator stopped inside a square structure at ground level that capped the shaft. Built to withstand anything short of a nuclear blast, I marked it as a final fallback position. Mid-morning sunshine dappled the airstrip through a sky of passing clouds. Close at hand, my father stood listening to a swirling vortex of the same crushed-pearl stuff that I’d come to know was the physical manifestation of kaval. It was like one of those spin-up twisters you see in the desert that come and go in a few seconds, except this one didn’t move or dissipate. Despite the urgency of the moment, it was so bizarre that it stunned me for a brief moment.

  “Artie!” Dad called, snapping me back to the present. “What’s the matter?”

  “That!” I said, ignoring his use of that damned name and pointing at the far end of the runway. Dozens of pointed orange horns were protruding into our plane of reality, ripping at the fabric of the Continuum like sharp scissors through silk. It only took seconds for the herd to tear open a gaping hole and charge through. As always happens in large scale fights, I only caught glimpses of the action that
didn’t involve me directly.

  More than a score of Ropocos rumbled through the gash, charging straight toward me. The complex’s automatic defenses turned out to be much more formidable than I’d known. Eight armored barbettes supporting turrets fitted with heavy weapons rose from each end and both sides of the runway. Half mounted the M61 Vulcan 20mm Gatling-style gun, while the others had the heavier GAU-8 30mm gun. Ropoco hides made alligator skin look softer than the belly of a 7-week-old Lab puppy, but against that kind of firepower, they might as well have been wearing cardboard.

  Terran rhinos aren’t noted for being overly bright, and their Ropoco cousins hadn’t raised the bar on intelligence, or so it seemed to me until I saw the genius of their tactics. Instead of dodging the streams of cannon shells, the animals charged directly at the cupolas. The Vulcan had a rate of fire of 6,000 rounds a minute, and the GAU-8 3,900 rpm. When all eight opened up on the herd of locomotive-sized Ropocos, in the first five seconds about 800 cannon rounds sped toward the orange biomass. I couldn’t make out details of the carnage, just an overall impression of blood, meat, and horns flying in all directions. Shredded Ropoco carcasses dropped where they were stuck, the forward momentum of their charge stopped by the impact of the shells.

  I knelt at the far end of the runway with the Carl Gustav ready to fire. Dad jogged up next to me, but I waved him away. The back blast could scorch a man. I risked a glance sideways. The miniature tornado had gone.

  “Keel?” I said.

  “Yeah. Those are the things you told me about, right?” Dad asked.

  “They’re called Ropocos. You need to get underground.”

  “I want to help.”

  “All you’re gonna do is distract me. Get to safety!”

  Instinctively, I wanted my father in a sheltered hidey-hole; having lost him once, I didn’t want to risk it again. I figured that Ropocos had better things to do than stampede down a lonely airfield getting shot to pieces. They weren’t the main enemy force. They were like Hannibal’s elephants, a shock force to open holes for the main army yet come. Dad might have once been a warrior, but he was now an aging warrior that I didn’t have time to worry about.

  Not that it mattered. He told me to fuck off.

  I couldn’t make out details beyond the zipping sound of the guns and the bleats of eviscerated Ropocos, and a general impression of colors glimpsed through a dust cloud. From what I could tell, the automatic defenses chewed them up worse than hyenas chewing up a baby antelope. Yet the warning in my head rang louder than ever. Could my sense be wrong?

  Mercs and Trashmen poured out of the hatches and elevator. Ribadlo and Jürgen were in overall command and deployed the men in a skirmish line. Some had Carl Gustavs and everyone else hefted some type of rifle. I began to feel better about us withstanding the attack.

  That only lasted half a minute, until a line of charging Ropcos thundered into view halfway down the runway. Ominously, I could no longer hear the sounds of the guns on the far end of the field. Soon enough I found out why.

  A pair of raised turrets between the Rocopos and us still poured out cannon rounds. Two Ropocos charged right into their stream of fire. Even as exploding shells blew out chunks of flesh in their wake, the giant animals kept coming. A series of hits shattered one of their forelegs, but that didn’t stop it either. Limping forward on three legs with intestines dragging the ground, a series of flashes on its forehead indicated direct hits. Then, and only then, did it fall on its side, 30 yards from the guns. The other one got within 10 yards before flying apart under dozens of direct hits.

  Others closed in from several directions and the turret couldn’t shift targets fast enough to engage them, but the turrets were armored. I couldn’t understand how even something as powerful as a Ropoco could put them out of action, and I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. One of the monsters reared back on its hind legs, stretching its snout more than 25 feet in the air, and waggled its massive forelegs. The turret finished tracking in time to open up at point blank range into the Ropoco’s stomach, cutting fatal holes straight through the creature. But that couldn’t stop it from bringing its legs down on the cannon barrels. Under tons of weight and force, they bent downward at a 50-degree angle.

  I glanced down both sides of the firing line. We all saw it and gaped at the realization; far from being stupid, Ropocos fought with each individual as part of a cohesive whole. Much like the Japanese of World War Two, they sacrificed themselves for the greater good of the herd.

  The last two turrets anchored our line, and I had to wonder how much ammo might be left in their magazines. Ejection ports piled spent casings in a deep circle around each. If they ran out all we’d have left were the Gustavs, since I knew from experience the worthlessness of rifles against the creatures. I waited until one got within 75 yards before firing the Gustav.

  The round raced downrange and slammed into a Ropoco’s bottom jaw. Most of its snout vaporized in the blast. It staggered sideways like a drunken comic leaving the stage in a seedy bar, but even with such a terrible wound it didn’t stop coming. Swinging its mangled head from side to side, within five strides it was galloping toward me again. I had to admire that kind of determination, to kill its killer, even as it scared the hell out of me. After reloading, I dropped it ten yards from where I knelt. The resulting explosion covered me in teal-colored blood and bits of orange skin. After wiping a viscous substance from my eyes, which might have been Ropoco brain matter, I had a chance to take stock of the battle.

  Carcasses lined both sides of the runway along its entire length. Only half a dozen Ropocos remained in fighting condition. To my right, one gored a man and threw him high overhead, and then cut another man in half by sweeping his horn like a sword. I lined up and fired my last round into its flank. Without my knowing it, somebody else did the same thing from its other side. The two explosions ripped the beast open from hips to shoulders. With fewer and fewer targets, the available firepower concentrated more on the same Ropocos, thereby multiplying the effects.

  The last four Ropocos finally had enough and made a run to disappear back to wherever they’d come from. Some desultory rifle fire made sure they didn’t change their minds. Cheers rippled down the firing line.

  Bent over, hands on knees, I sucked in dusty air to satiate the burning in my lungs. Straightening and bending backward, I shook my head to clear it. The fight wasn’t over, and I knew it, but shoulder-fired weapons often left the shooter rattled. The shell speed at the moment it exited the barrel exceeded 500 miles an hour. Hot gases exploded out both ends of the barrel, buffeting the shooter, in this case me, with the blast wave, which bounced off the ground and hit me again. I’d fired three rounds, which left me feeling like I’d stiffed the wrong bookie and his goons had come to collect.

  Dad had picked up an M16 somewhere. He ambled over to pat me on the back, and in between deep breaths I asked if he was trying to tickle the damned Ropocos. The M16 he carried used .223 caliber bullets, which were the perfect size for a double tap in the back of a contract target’s head. Such a lightweight round had enough power to penetrate a human skull, but not enough to blow an exit hole. Therefore, it ricocheted around and scrambled the target’s brain like tomorrow’s breakfast eggs. Against a Ropoco’s two-inch-thick leathery hide, however, they were more likely to bounce off and kill the rifleman who’d fired them.

  “It’s all I could find on short notice,” he said.

  I pointed at the gaping hole in our reality.

  “Can you close that?”

  “Hell no, that’s way over my pay grade.”

  Jürgen joined us then, a laser rifle in the crook of his right arm.

  “Never a dull moment.”

  “There’s more coming, and soon.”

  He didn’t question me, not anymore.

  “How soon?”

  I nodded down the runway.

  “Now.”

  From a distance, the rent in the Continuum looked like a long te
ar in a bedsheet. Beyond our reality was darkness, from which poured oddly configured vehicles that could only be Armored Personnel Carriers. Though lower and wider than human APCs, you couldn’t mistake the purpose behind having gun turrets on top. Most had at least ten wheels.

  In my earpiece I heard Ribaldo and Jürgen jabbering away in some Slavic language that I guessed was Albanian, which made it obvious they wanted the conversation to remain private. If there’s one language an American in unlikely to understand, it’s Albanian. Out of ammo for the Carl Gustav and having left my M14 rifle behind in the conference room when I bolted to the surface, that left me armed with my pistols and knives.

  “Ribaldo, what the fuck am I looking at?” I said, interrupting their chatter while knowing the microphone in my earpiece would pick up my voice.

  “I am headed your way, Steed.”

  “You can’t talk and walk?”

  “Stick that turd back up your arse, you can shit when I get there.”

  I was pretty sure that meant “shut up,” and since I had no idea what was happening, I complied. Less than a minute later all of the Trashmen were standing in a knot watching the enemy force approaching down the runway. They weren’t coming very fast. Apparently maintaining tight formation trumped everything else, but there were a helluva lot of them and more poured out of the Continuum every second.

  “I’m starting to wonder if Dona S.’s offer still stands,” I said as our little knot waited for Cynthia to emerge from the elevator shaft and join us.

  “I’m not,” Dad said.

  “I was kidding, Dad.”