by Dennis Fueyo
Bullets pocked the ground around Sam as he biked near a half-sunken park off the main road. He ditched his bike behind a tall debris pile, scrambled over its col to the peak and assessed their defenses. Spotter Teams Amberjack and Tiger Shark had fanned out along the ridge of the expansive collection. Ants loaded rifles and handed them to guardians protecting the southeastern edge of the road. Many dead Divers lay tossed about the thoroughfare.
Sam hailed a Team Amberjack Spotter and commanded, “Give me a sit-rep!”
“We’re holding them, sir. They have RPGs and grenades, but they’re not using them unless we get a sniper positioned in close.”
“Are the traps holding up?”
“Team Coral reported significant suppression of the enemy. The jackers tried to flank east through the school but had to pull back when Team Barracuda lit the fuel drums. The enemy hit every building afterward with rockets.”
Sam laughed and said, “Must have been pissed.” Then, he recognized a contractor firing her old Colt semiauto near the road. “Suzy-Q!”
Suzy Lancaster caught his voice immediately and gave him a signal she was ok.
“Suzy, get your ass over here!” Sam chose his shots, giving her cover fire as she flew across the milled blacktop. She shimmied up the trash pile, and he pulled her in close by her jacket and checked her torso for wounds.
“I’m fine, Sam!”
“Take my bike and two ants, and head to Bridge Tender Marina. The elder is waiting there guarded by a friendly swamp stomper named James. The guy is tougher than a tanned hide, but they should not be left alone.”
“The brains and worms are nearby on the Bikeway,” she said, voice trembling.
“Get over there and take everyone to the labs. Dig in. Make sure nothing gets near. We lose the south house, and we lose our supply of antibiotics.”
“Yes, sir!” She kissed him square on the lips.
Shaquan inched over next to him. “Alright, lover boy, how you want to do this?”
“Team up with Abu and support Team Coral.” Sam pointed towards the school. “They were supporting Team Barracuda in the school. Probably need help themselves now.”
Next to Shaquan, Juan lay still on the pile with eyes shut and slipped on a pair of earbuds. He reminded Sam of a leather jacket: soft and warm on one side, durable and weathered on the other. Whenever he donned earbuds, the hammer dropped.
“Which one are you playing?” asked Sam.
“Skrillex. All is fair in love and brostep.”
“Work your magic, man!”
Juan blasted off over the mound and disappeared into tall cord grass.
Sam pulled Tom in close and said, “Dad! You guys can see in infrared, right?”
“We can, Sammy!” Bullets pinged off a smashed bathtub near his head. “Maybe you should fall back, too?”
“Take Lou and head straight up the ruins. Several gator ponds cover some old vacation homes ahead. They should be useful, with Lou’s help.”
“Got it!” Tom looked at his child. Warmth flooded over his face injecting courage into his joints. He knew, deep down to his heart valves, Sam would come out unscathed. Uncertainty lied in everyone around him. “Sammy, I’m so proud of you!”
“I love you, Dad. Show me your new skills!” Sam grasped Emelia’s arm and guided her near. “Can you get close to them?”
“I sure can, lover boy!”
Known for hyper-focused thinking and carbon fiber nerves, not much shook Sam’s strategic flow. He blinked at her statement and stupidly put words together: “Suzy is a friend, kind of a sister but not really. No, not a sister! Look, we’re not—”
“Stay focused, tough guy”—Emelia slapped his chest, laughing—“I got this.”
Snapping back to attention, he commanded, “Take Sheila with you. If things go hand to hand, you will need her.”
Sheila packed her fist into her chest and called out, “Wacker jacker time!”
“Spotter,” Sam hollered to a nearby sniper, “fall back with me.”
“Yes, master hunter. Where to?”
Sam replied with a Medieval grin. “We’re going to light them up.”
∆ ∆ ∆
The deep, rich bass of Skrillex’s dubstep muffled out screams from dying jackers and whizzing bullets ricocheting off old concrete foundations. Juan dodged behind longleaf pines and vaulted over sandy mounds. Every twenty feet, he dropped and fired his hunting rifle. Every twenty feet, at least one jacker struck down by wrath. He wormed his way along I17, reaching a street sign bent in half. Torchwood. He perforated a dozen shadows crossing Torchwood, sending more fumbling back into the darkness.
Juan lifted his sight, paused the music, and checked the road. Only rotted jackers. He slipped his headphones back on and continued sniping the enemy.
Screams welled up further down the road, muffled and blended in with Skrillex’s booming beats.
Another wave attempted to cross. Why did the jacker cross the road, Juan thought. He dropped more than ten bodies, chambering shots in blinding speed. I have no idea because they’re not getting to the other side.
A sizeable electric arc rose two blocks to the north. He knew what was coming. Ducking his head down, heat from the titanic explosion washed over his neck and into his clothes.
“Goddammit, Sammy! Too close!”
∆ ∆ ∆
Abu, Shaquan, and Sheila followed Emelia up the road a short distance and stopped.
Emelia fired off a series of rounds, toppling figures attempting to traverse Diver ground. She could see through the black rainy night as if fighting at high noon on a clear day. Each bullet she let loose knocked reddish-yellow jacker figures over on their faces.
“We need to break east,” Abu yelled over the battle din.
“Abu!” Sheila motioned to bring in his ear. She held his head looking into his deep, introspective eyes, and kissed him. “Come back to me.”
“I promise!” He kissed her once more and darted off into the dense brush, Shaquan trailing behind.
Sheila giggled as Shaquan egged Abu on his heels: “Damn, she rub some meth on her lips? Look at you go! Sheila and Abu sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”
“Sheila, focus!” barked Emelia. “Cover my ass, I need to concentrate.”
Covered by Sheila’s suppressing fire, Emelia sealed her eyes and mentally felt around the landscape. Like someone searching for a TV remote in the dark, she spread her senses around tulip poplars and sweet bays, through wax myrtle thickets until she found a useful target: a jacker holding an RPG. Her muscles flinched as she assumed his somatic system.
Raising the weapon, he turned to a group of eight fellow jackers sneaking in. Emelia’s fingers twitched, imagining the puppet squeezing the trigger, and sent all eight hurling backward. Through his eyes, she watched pieces of them snow to the ground.
Suddenly, an electric arc flashed upward breaking her concentration. “What was that?”
“Duck!” Sheila knew what it was. The Britts had two fuel dumps primed for defensive use, and she heard rumors the Divers had ten-times more.
She plowed Emelia’s head down as the detonation billowed overhead.
∆ ∆ ∆
Lou and Tom wove around dunes and bounded over giant craters, moving up I17. Through their enhanced sight, figures danced about in brilliant light positioning for a chance to cap a Diver. Each one looking in Tom’s direction lost a chunk of something. An arm blustered off here, a piece of brains ejected out there. Lou took several shots to be safe, but Tom needed only one.
Tom’s heightened reflexes guided them away from traps long established by the Divers; ammonia nitrate bombs, spikes coated with muckbear fur, and buckshot tripwires to name a few. Bodies with shaved heads revealed traps already sprung. Those not defaced by acid or fire gazed to the night sky as if relieved, freed from the jacker lifestyle.
“Doc,” Lou grabbed Tom’s gear pack and pointed, saying, “there they are!”
A dozen alligators hu
nkered down in a watering hole to avoid the battle were waiting quietly for respite. The feast would be later after the bursts stopped. Beyond, jackers raced across a weatherworn street, but they could not reach the other side.
“Why are some of them falling?” asked Lou.
Tom pointed a giddy finger.
Laying undercover, the reddish-yellow outline of Juan bolted his hunting rifle dropping one jacker at a time.
“I think we should help him out,” Tom said and patted Lou’s back.
Focusing on the hiding gators, Lou wafted the scent of fresh meat into their noses and wicked a craving for fatty flesh. The illusion was convincing, and the urge was uncontrollable. All twelve raced out following the imaginary dinner bell towards a cluster of jackers waiting beyond Torchwood. Shrill cries echoed out in the night as each gator leaped full weight onto its prey. Those not ripped apart at their joints by sharp diamond-shaped teeth ran away screaming.
Then, an arc of electricity shot into the air, breaking Lou’s concentration. “What the hell was—”
Retreating jackers became consumed by a wall of gaseous flame. Its trailing discharge sent Lou and Tom on their backs.
Blinded by the heat and ears ringing, Tom felt around and found Lou moaning and holding his eyes. “Thank God, are you ok?”
“No! Fucking hell, what was that?”
A distant voice yelled, “Goddammit, Sammy! Too close!”
∆ ∆ ∆
Sam waved Emelia off, picked up a bicycle, and yelled over his shoulder, “Spotter, keep me covered!” The two peddled away from the debris barricade swaying side to side while shells dug in near Sam’s heels.
“Spotter, count with me—one, two, ugh!” A rocket barreled in, yards from Sam’s front tire, lifting him up into an ollie over a paint-stripped wooden fence. Rolling the bike around, Sam dragged himself back to the seat.
Behind him counted the spotter, “Four, five, six…”
Sam shouted out, “Seven, eight, nine…”
Followed by the other spotter, he sped with cramping legs to a storage unit warehouse. Reaching the gate, he yanked a set of keys out and unlocked it, still counting, “Eighteen, nineteen, twenty.” He passed the gate and reached a row of storage units. Sifting through his pockets, he found a second key and opened a storage unit door. While lifting upward, he noticed the other spotter no longer counting.
He was gone.
Sam shook off remorse creeping in and concentrated on his counting, “Twenty, uh, four. Twenty-five…come on!” His dive light illuminating the unit. He twisted by mounding electronic equipment and tripped over electronic cables until reaching a series of levers connected to bundles of large, electric cables. Tapping several, he said aloud, “That one, that one, and, um, that one. Thirty! Thirty times six feet per second, 60 meters. Dammit, it’s going to be close.”
One by one, he threw the switches. Distant booms vibrated metal cabinets and quaked motherboards off workbenches. Sweat, fear, and dread dripped over his brow, and uric salts stung his eyes. “Please”—he looked upward—“let them be ok.”
Sam stepped back onto the road and found the dead spotter crimpled around his fallen bike. He almost made it. Plumes of yellow and black mushroomed into the air. At least those bastards will join him.
∆ ∆ ∆
Abu turned his head over the log that shielded him from scorching heat to peruse what remained after the explosion. “Sam’s underground gas tank leveled the school grounds.”
Shaquan crept up and pulled his hands from the ember imbued bark to view structures leveled into a lake of fire. “Holy Christ, almighty. Sammy cut it too close, Abu.”
“I had a feeling he was thinking this. Otherwise, he would’ve charged straight up the highway taking them head-on.”
“Cocky little turd, isn’t he?”
“True, but he would have his father and friends flanking him. He’s calculating, not impulsive.”
“Too many variables,” Shaquan said pondering earlier discussions.
“What do you mean?” asked Abu.
“Smart kid. He waited to see how the jackers would bring it. Think about it, Abu, if he knew which path the jackers would attack from, he would never have chewed fat by a campfire. Waited for them to attack so he could scare the crap out of them. He planned to use the fuel dumps all along.
“If they attacked from the river, he would have dunked the batteries. From the sea, forget about it—easy pickings. Our boats can spin circles around their beat-up skiffs. This was the most probable approach those bastards would take, and Sammy knew it. Now we know they’ll try the river next. He removed variables so we can go on the offensive.”
Shaquan tapped Abu’s pack. “A hundred bucks, it’s exactly what he was thinking. Let’s double back and meet up with your girlfriend.”
“I’m not taking that bet. We can cut through…what in Neptune’s name?”
Shaquan glimpsed what caught Abu’s attention. Three ships, lights dimmed, coasted south in open water outside the jagged wreckage of sunken Shell Island.
Abu asked, “Do those look like Coast Guard cutters?”
“Yeah, but what are they…” Shaquan grasped Abu’s vest, fingers digging into the neoprene underneath, and shouted, “My God! Abu, come on!” Neck deep in concern, he drew Abu upright and said, “The brains, man, jackers are going for the brains and worms.”
It was their worst fear coming true. Every precaution taken to divert the tide of evil flowing over the tribe under one assumption: the jackers had no military support. Yet two cutters drifted towards old Bridge Tender Marina with lights doused and engines at half power. None of the Divers considered jackers capable of accessing military transports—no country would wager on the mass of outlaws. When discussed, the topic was laughable.
“How did they get them?” asked Abu trying to keep Shaquan’s pace.
Abu and Shaquan sprinted through ghostly neighborhoods, stumbled across wetlands and pushed over wet, soft sand. Stray jacker snipers, lone wolves snared in razor wire or mortally wounded in spear pits, took potshots at them as they dodged and weaved southeast. The two cleared the burbs and shifted through the last flooded cul-de-sac only to surprise a unit of winded jackers.
Shaquan scaled a splintered pine fence, New Wrightsville Beach in his sight, only to witness torchlight shining off jacker’s oily, shaven pates. Worse, the unit was not tired from subterfuge activities, having enough energy to rape seven men and women cut off during the assault. Shaquan pumped two jackers with his rifle and broke the neck of a third. Abu placed a round in a jacker’s skull and bashed two others using the butt of his Marlin rifle.
Abu began to triage the ravaged, wounded Divers but Shaquan yanked his arm onward saying, “We got to keep moving, Zaid, they’re in firing range!”
Cannon blasts cracked out, echoing over the shoreline.
“Too late!” yelled Shaquan, and he sacked Abu. They covered each other in a ball.
Explosions louder than the defensive propane tanks Sam ignited sent tympanic rupturing booms into the men’s eardrums. The shelling went on for what felt like years.
It stopped after twenty minutes.
Intense ringing drove tears from Shaquan’s ducts. He clutched his chest in shock at the unvetted destruction across New Wrightsville Beach.
Abu prayed, “Oh Allah, our Lord and Sustainer. Grant us good in this world and good in the Hereafter, and save us from the Fire of Jahannam.”
The words brought little comfort to Shaquan. He wanted to leave the tribe, but not this way. There would never be a memory of peace when reflecting on Wilmington, not now. He helped Abu up and walked towards Bridge Tender Marina at a brisk pace, stepping to the rhythm of Abu’s prayer.
Shell-shocked birds twirled blindly in the night, and confused gators dug under foundations as the two passed Spanish Wells Drive. Three gators bolted using mutated, elongated legs. Shaquan kept himself directed on the forty-foot flames and gaseous clouds rising where earlier he shared
a campfire with the elder and James Laramie.
Legs filling with lactic acid, he stopped and leaned on Abu saying, “I got one, memorized from a movie.” He recited, “In the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, begone and stay far from this creature of God. For it is He who commands you, He who flung you headlong from the heights of heaven into the depths of hell.”
“I know this one,” Abu said, pulled Shaquan forward and joined the incantation. “Seducer of men, betrayer of nations, instigator of envy, font of avarice, fomenter of discord, author of pain and sorrow. Begone, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Shaquan tripped and pulled himself back up on Abu’s shoulder. “Amen, brother.”
Projecting from the base of the flames, a reddish outline formed the skeleton of the south house where scientists and educators took shelter and hid. Shaquan knew the devastation was irreversible, rendering the muscles in his back string-tight like a guitar. “Let’s exorcise those motherfuckers from Wilmington.”
Abu continued, “Lord, heed my prayer.
“And let my cry be heard by you,” Shaquan said, finishing the incantation. “Come on, people will need our help. We can make it.” He took long strides, ignoring the intense burning in his legs as they tried to lock in place.
“Look”—Abu pointed east and marveled—“dawn is breaking!”
Shaquan continued hobbling along, feeling early morning light caress his face. He led the next passage: “Come on, keep chanting, man. I adjure you, ancient serpent, by the judge of the living and the dead, by your Creator, by the Creator of the whole universe, by Him who has the power to consign you to hell, to depart forthwith in fear, along with your savage minions, from this servant of God.”
Shaquan’s steps contorted on blisters. Calves became lame from carrying his body for so many days. Still, he pushed on ignoring the pain. “For it is the power of Christ that compels you, tremble before that mighty arm that broke asunder the dark prison walls and led souls forth to light.”