Terminus: A Novella of the Apocalypse (15 page)

“You might have selected Cambodia or Laos or even Formosa, but you chose the, as you say, buttholes of East Asia.  Though nobody can be certain now, since they’re all dead, we suspect at least some of your American leadership understood what was happening and resisted it in their own small ways.  They might have even been somewhat immune to the Sleep Signal, same as some of us somehow avoided the fullest effects of Terminus.”

My eyebrows arch, “Did we?”

Again, he grins and shows the palms of his hands in supplication, “We are alive, are we not?  I assure you, we were not meant to be.  Because of this, the bugs are afraid.  They can’t go home, and now they can no longer be certain of their control over us.  It’s just a matter of time before they unleash the next, more thorough iteration of the Terminus Signal, but it’s also just a matter of time before we strike back.  They know it.  We know it.”

Standing to stretch my legs and ease the pressure on my butt from that uncomfortable chair, I stride to the windows overlooking the now emptying prep room.  “What’s next?”

“Simple.  We’ve armed the bombs.  Now, we load them into the spacecraft and launch it.”

Engineer joins me at the windows, rubbing his buttocks unhappily.  “They won’t, ah… shoot it down?”

“Perhaps, but we think not.”  When we glare at him reproachfully, he shrugs and amends his assertion by adding, “We hope not.  We believe they are not fully aware of this base and all the secrets it contains.  It is the legacy of your best people.  You can be proud of that.”

Monitoring final preparations in silence for several long minutes, I mull everything I have heard through shocked thoughts and a stunned mind.  Something about it all bothers me.  This is an itch I cannot scratch, an irritating tingle set directly between my shoulder blades at the center of my spine.  No matter how I mentally wiggle, I find no way of addressing it, so it grows minute by minute, and then second by second.  Before long, it passes from a whisper of a thought to a scream of horror.

Snapping my fingers, I spin and point to The Girl.  “The map!”

Her sparkling green eyes pop wide and she jumps.  First, her left hand flexes to the hilt of her knife.  Then she recovers, understands my meaning, and redirects the movement to her voluminous purse.  To his credit, The Russian stiffens only moderately.  Like everyone else Post-Terminus, he shows small concern for his fate, and would no doubt happily pay with his own life for the murder of his children.  With a strangely aloof and detached interest, somewhat bemused, he watches The Girl unfold the gold foil.

Before he can speak to dismiss my concerns, I return to the table and make a two-handed gesture over one of the esoteric symbols stamped into the tissue-thin device.  I know this to be some sort of reset button.  The interface returns to its original state.

Pointing to the map section of the display, I hiss, “They know.”

Glib at first, The Russian’s eyes wrinkle and he leans forward to examine the lines and squiggles with improving interest.  “Where did you find this scrap of alien technology?”

The Villagers take turns telling the short version of their adventure with the crashed spacecraft, all of them perhaps expecting a reflection of their own sense of shock upon hearing his story.  Instead, the soldier remains nonplussed and unconcerned.  When they finish, he once more leans backward into his chair and regards them coolly.

“It means nothing,” he declares, waving away their concerns.

“How can you be so certain?” demands Chief hotly.

Obstinately, he repeats, “It means nothing.”  Then the man’s craggy face drops into a dissatisfied scowl, “No, this is not the truth.  I should not introduce lies into our, as you say, blossoming relationship.  You say it crashed?  You found a Russian missile embedded in the wreck?  Yes.  I must confess.  They know about this place now.”

He sighs and glances away.  “Approximately six months ago, remnant Russian, Chinese and Indian forces responded to abruptly increased alien orbital activity by firing our entire inventory of high-altitude defense missiles into a small armada of descending enemy spacecraft.  At the time, we interpreted this activity to be advanced preparations for a preemptive strike against us.  Though we put a dent in their preparations, we are not so foolish as to believe we entirely stopped them.  At this point, however, we have done all we can do, and now The Enterprise has nothing left.  Except this.  It is truly our last gasp.”

“It’s interesting, though,” I muse thoughtfully.

When I fall silent, Chief impatiently prods, “What?”

“Six months is a long time.  Since I first saw it, I wondered why they never returned to the wreck to retrieve that body or, at least, destroy the debris to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.  Now I wonder about something else strange there… something I initially overlooked.”

“The second seat in the cockpit,” guesses Engineer, snapping his fingers.

“Right.  I initially assumed the personnel were simply superfluous, rendered unnecessary by automated systems, perhaps.  Now, I think perhaps not.  Maybe they normally fly in pairs, for whatever reason.  Maybe they only sent one, because this was all they could spare.”

“Ah,” enthuses The Russian, joining us at the broad window wall, “you begin to see.  We think this is also the reason why they deployed those bugs all around this base.  Many others like you have attempted the same journey for the same reasons and failed.  Their bones litter the desert.  Your military would have called them ‘force multipliers’.  We call them watchdogs.”

Our eyes follow the last rack of bombs as technicians push it through the double-doors and into the hangar beyond.  While they swing open and shut, open and shut, we see a long trail of its mates disappearing into the voluminous belly of the spacecraft.  After they place and secure their loads, the technicians return to the hangar bay to stand in a loose group at the rear of the vehicle, all talking quietly while exchanging handshakes, back-slaps and other triumphant embraces.

“That’s it, then,” sighs our suddenly deflated Chief.  His shoulders sagging and his chin drooping, he leans his forehead against the Plexiglas so his breath fogs it thinly when he adds, “No matter how it ends, it will all be over, really over, in a few hours.  Either your Trojan horse knocks them out, or it doesn’t.  If it fails, then they’ll return to wipe us out.  Either way, it will be finished.”

“Yes,” concurs The Russian.  Next, he points toward the Chinawoman behind us, adding, “Do you see her now?  She tests our three redundant flight controls.  They are rather simple devices, really.  You remember your video games?  More alien technology, of course, but useful, nonetheless.  Those controllers work much the same way.  The ship itself is largely automated, we just have to tell it where to go.  Each of those units has the target and all viable routes to it preprogrammed into memory.  One will deploy inside the spacecraft with a sacrificial volunteer.  Two will remain on Earth, one in this base and the other dispatched along the tunnel system to another secure location.  See?  Even now, she hands the third failsafe to its-.”

Here, his words cut short.  The floor shudders.  Ceiling tiles jar loose, dangle and then drop all around us.  Through the stony walls and the flimsier interior structures, we feel a lung-compressing concussion.  A second.  A third.  From a break in the far wall, where that rough-hewn and rapidly hacked tunnel merges into the prep-room beyond the transparent barricade, a billow of dust and fine debris pours forth to cover equipment and personnel with a fine sift of sand and ash.

Another distant series of thumps strike our ears, each sounding as though its source had moved closer, strike after strike, like the footfalls of a massive, unseen giant sedately strolling across the desert overhead, bound in our direction.  Shortly after the echoes of each blast pass through us to reverberate against the far wall of the hangar, successive gouts of dust belch forth from the hacked tunnel mouth.  Each is more massive than the one before, so we know the explosions are moving closer, second upon second.

The Engineer flinches and ducks with every ‘crump’.  In an excited voice, he demands, “What is it?  What’s happening?”

Rather than reply, The Russian anxiously retreats onto the stage behind us, where he snatches one of the controllers from the Chinawoman.  A second younger man has taken another, which he immediately turns to rush past us toward the spacecraft.  By now, a flood of personnel are returning to the cluttered preparation chamber, so the doors to the hangar stand wide during the rush.  We see the massive spacecraft clearly making final arrangements for flight.  Its gigantic rear cargo ramp ascends, leaving only a much smaller personnel ramp hanging above the deck.  This moves with the craft, however, as it begins backing toward the towering rolling hangar doors, which have been ponderously spreading wide enough to accommodate its passage.

As the second control-wielding man pushes through the temporarily impassible doorway to the hangar, another series of explosions rumble through the caverns surrounding us.  Then something truly disturbing happens.

I feel a sharp spike of pain jab through my head from ear to ear, as though some unseen hand has passed an electrified rod through my skull.  My entire body thrums electrically, and I momentarily lose control of my muscles and bones.  Through rolling eyes, I see my comrades suffering the same painful sensations.  Their faces pale, their jaws hang slackly, and I watch rivulets of spittle and drool flow from the corners of their mouths as they dance an epileptic jig, their movements uncontrolled and jerky.  Most fall to the ground, even as the explosions move relentlessly closer.

For a mad moment, my thoughts scramble.  A bizarre series of visions flash through my mind.  I cannot say how long this state of absolute confusion lasts, perhaps minutes, maybe seconds, but when lucidity returns I realize I have experienced this panicky sprawl of emotions once before.  It reminds me of… Terminus.
 

THE REPRISAL

As I collect my wits, I realize I am among the first to recover.  When I glance around to confirm this, I see The Girl standing beside me, her normally placid face alarmed and splattered with conflicting emotions.  Her green eyes sparkle as her gaze turns the calamity encroaching upon her from all directions.  At her feet, The Engineer and The Chief seize dramatically.  The Guide has bitten through his lower lip.  Blood pours over his chin to fleck his expensive silk suit.

First, she notices The Kid.  Like her, he stands impervious to the new broadcast signal.  Then she notices me.  Immediately, she drops to a ready stance, her left hand snatching that big knife out of its scabbard.

Before she can gut me, I raise my hands.  For some reason, we three have resisted the new signal entirely.  I hurry to declare, “I’m alright.  I’m alright!”

She relaxes, but only slightly.  We collect ourselves and back away from our spasm-wracked comrades.  Based on past experience, we can guess what happens next.

“We have to be quick!” I gasp, dragging my younger mates by their elbows toward the doors, “When these people come around again, we won’t want to join the party!”

By now, the gouts of dust and debris pouring forth from the hacked tunnel on the far side of the prep-chamber continue with greater urgency.  Larger rocks and chunks of stone accompany the pebbles and sand.  These ricochet with lethal force into the room and bounce off everything in sight.  Equipment smashes.  Tables collapse.  Bones shatter.  The air billows thick with lung-clogging dust.  To escape it and the murderous spree developing at our feet, we head for the wide double-doors leading into the hangar, hopping and stepping over or on the twitching bodies sprawled across the deck.

Halfway through to the hangar, The Kid stops to retrieve the first controller from a pair of spasm-clenched fists belonging to young male wearing a Pakistani uniform.  As he pries at the Paki’s fingers, The Kid glances up at us for assistance and reassurance.  In response, I tug at The Girl’s elbow, urging her to follow me to safety.  She resists, yanking her elbow free of my grip.  When I glance backward to question her, I see her lashing out with her knife toward The Kid, and I fear she has gone over the edge, after all.

Then I see the Paki’s fingers come apart at the first knuckles.  Blood sprays, and the controller retracts into The Kid’s clutching grasp.

With audible gasps of relief, the three of us step over seizing bodies piled over the threshold to jump into the hangar.  Before us, the massive spacecraft continues backing slowly toward the retractable hangar barricades, which have rolled almost completely into the walls to either side.  On a quick glance, however, I measure the width of the gaping exit and compare it to the width of the massive craft.  The people charged with clearing it have fallen to the ground, where they twitch and drool.  Several meters of the last panel remain un-retracted.  The ship will not clear.

When I turn to direct my young companions toward the nearest side of the opening, where we might find sufficient clearance to escape the pending madhouse about to erupt all around us, I find The Kid has separated from myself and The Girl.  Tucking the controller under his arm, he leaps onto the personnel gangway as it rotates upwards into the skin of the vessel, just clearing its lowest step to disappear inside that monstrous amalgam of human and alien technology.

Pulling The Girl close to keep her from disappearing, I harshly whisper, “So long, Kid, and good luck!”

By now, the massive vessel towers over us as it continues its painstaking crawl toward the partially occluded doors, where it will tear itself apart.  Dragging The Girl after me, I head for the massive ramp that leads up to the saltpan high overhead.  When we pass near the partially retracted doors, The Girl once more tears away from my grip.

Defiantly, she stands her ground, her face fierce and her green eyes blazing.  Then she points to the manual door controls before sprinting toward them without further hesitation.  I groan and curse, shaking my head and thinking to myself how this is no time for heroics.

As I pause to consider a future without her, I realize the people on the floor have stopped twitching and contorting painfully.  From one moment to the next, they appear to be collecting their senses, and I know only seconds separate us from a wild melee that must ultimately end our lives, should we linger.  Glancing from them to The Girl, I realize she can never hope to finish her self-assigned task alone.  I groan.

I follow.  Overtaking her, I point behind us with one hand and indicate I should operate the controls with the other.  As we close the meters that separate us from our destination, the cavernous space falls eerily silent.

Despite the ringing in our ears, we can hear the squeak-squeal of the massive spacecraft’s tires as it creeps along, gaining speed and momentum now that all its outer portals have closed and a pilot has assumed control of it.  Seconds remain before it smashes into the partially collapsed panels, damaging the vessel’s hull and thereby rendering it unspaceworthy.

Before us, the two Enterprisers tasked with retracting those massive barricades snap-to, drag themselves to their feet, and then turn to confront us, drawn by our hurried rush and, thus, distracted from destroying each other.  Lowering their torsos and spreading their arms for the attack, they rush headlong in our direction, clearly intending to take us apart at our fleshy seams.

Confronting this new existential threat, my body recalls long-buried Terminus-developed skills as my muscles tense and my posture alters to confront them.  Running slightly before and beside me, I sense The Girl has also prepared herself for the fight.

In the last instant, I sidestep the unreasoning charge of the leftmost Enterpriser and clip him across his left cheek with a savage roundhouse blow of my right fist, which crosses my chest with a whistle of wind.  This guy collapses forward across his pumping knees to slide face-first through the years-deep dust accumulated on the hangar deck, even as The Girl slices so completely through the second’s neck that his head topples backward between his shoulder blades.  Bloods sprays in twin geysers as his windpipe sucks and gargles.  He joins his unconscious comrade in the dust.

Behind us as we reach the manual door controls, we watch the Terminus-inspired horde struggle to its feet and then immediately begin beating itself to death one corpse at a time.  As I work frantically to retract the final panels, the spacecraft crawls toward it and several maddened demons take note of our movement.  They charge across the distance as The Girl drops into a low crouch, knife in hand, ready to repulse them.

Seconds pass, and my arm begins to tire against the wheel that draws the panel further and further backward into its recess.  I must make several spins of this massive device for every centimeter of lateral distance.  As I labor, I watch the approach of those crazed Enterprisers at the base of that lumbering vehicle, and I begin to believe success to be impossible.  Switching hands, I spin faster and faster as my fresh arm immediately begins to burn from the effort.

When the Terminal cases grapple with The Girl, I must resist the urge to join her.  I know she will only takeover for me at the wheel, if I abandon my duty, and I further understand we must both die for such a hesitation.  Slashing and stabbing, spinning and jumping, dashing and dodging, she works tirelessly to keep me clear of them, and I am duly impressed by her savage ability.  Each encounter takes its toll on her, however, and I see her cheeks cut, her lips split, and her brows contused.  Blood flows freely from her broken nose like water gushes from an open hydrant.

Now the spacecraft’s thrusters pass overhead.  Wider and wider, the main body of its hulk approaches the final panels, which withdraw with imponderable slowness.  Seconds and centimeters separate The Enterprise’s last gasp from disastrous failure.

Before I can finish the job, a pair of hands fall onto my free upper arm.  Turning slightly, I find a flushed face pickled with lunacy glaring at me.  I feel nails rake my flesh through the sleeve of my shirt, which rips with a disturbing sound of pending mortality.  Tipping my body sideways away from the threat, I flex my left knee to take my right foot off the deck, and then I lash out viciously with this, doubling the freak at the waist and sending him wheeling backward into The Girl’s blood-frothed knife.

Switching arms again, I perform the same side-kick against another visitor encroaching from the opposite side, this one a slight Indian girl wielding a broken piece of pipe for a club.  In the same instant that my boot makes contact with her solar-plexus, her makeshift club makes contact with my skull.  Bright light floods my vision.  My ears ring.  The world goes momentarily dark.

When I finally manage to wring blood from my sight with a hasty drag of my shaking fingertips, I find the crazed young woman on top of me, the pipe rising and falling rhythmically against my body.  With a vague sense of gratefulness, I recognize the flail of her right arm, which has apparently been broken during a previous encounter.  This injury has weakened the power of her assault and, though dull stabs of pain accompany each strike, I neither feel nor hear the breakage of my own bones beneath them, much to my relief.  Bucking my body and twisting my pelvis, I toss her away from me.  With reduced alacrity, I sweep my legs around to break several of her ribs as I roll onto my feet, and then I finally dispatch her by striking forward with my heel against her chin using all the strength left in my leg.  As I watch her fly backwards, her neck snapped, I am alarmed by the unsteadiness of my movements.  With distracted fingers, I feel a swollen gash above my left eye, and I note the incredible gush of blood flowing down the side of my face to soak the collar of my shirt.

Numbly, I stumble to return to the controls, though sounds of a struggle to my right catch my attention.  There, I see two ghouls working to pin The Girl between them so a third can strangle her.  The one on my right has trapped her left arm and is working furiously to pry the knife out of her fingers, while the Enterpriser on my left both traps her right arm and uses his head as a battering ram to repeatedly pummel the side of her skull, which begins to bleed from a series of small cuts hidden beneath her hairline.

Though the spacecraft towers over us and a glance skyward reveals only a thin slab of light between its flanks and the nearly retracted door, I decide to help The Girl first.  Without her, given the numerous, crazed faces turned in the direction of our struggle, I know I can never hope to finish my job.  With a brutal forward kick, I break the knee of the Terminal case holding her knife arm, and then I spin to rake the knuckles of my left hand across the face of the second demon, sending him stumbling backward, his forehead bloodied by the many head-butts he has delivered against my companion’s contused skull.

Now she returns to work with her knife, first plunging it deep into the chest of the third berserker who had labored to choke her, and then sweeping it in a wide arc to open the throat of the second Enterpriser as he recovers from my previous blow to his now smashed nose.  As she rounds on the first assailant, who rejoins the struggle to try to control her knife arm again, I return to the wheel.

Groggy and unsteady on my feet, I work it round and round, slowly at first, and then with greater and greater fury.  Heedless of the noise and distraction rising at my back, I surrender The Girl to her fate and expend the last of my upper body strength against that endless spin… round and round and round… faster and faster and faster… then it catches, nearly breaking my elbow with the sudden resistance of it.  Above us, the gigantic spacecraft fills the doorway with merely centimeters to spare along either side.

Using a jumping jab of my right boot, I cave in the chest of yet another maddened Enterpriser before he can wrap a length of USB cable around The Girl’s heaving neck, and then I jerk her away from another, which she has hacked to death.

Leaving a pile of dead or mortally injured bodies behind us, we slip and slide through the resultant pool of blood, dodging the ponderous roll of the spacecraft’s three-meter tires to charge up the gently sloping ramp toward the exit far ahead.  Panting and heaving, we struggle to catch our exhausted breath as we dab our eyesight free of blood, both theirs and ours.

The Girl limps along with desperate urgency, and for the first time I note a thick flow of blood from a terrible gash in her upper right thigh.  As we limp along, I assess the damage and quickly determine the rate of blood loss is unsustainable.

Gripping her by her right upper arm, I pull her to a halt.  Though she protests, pointing to the nearing crush of the massive vehicle and the crazed hordes pouring up the ramp around it, I snap my belt from the loops of my jeans, and then stoop to wrap this around her thigh above the gash, pulling it tight.  With blood-slickened fingers, I fumble to push the buckle catch through an eyelet to maintain life-saving pressure on her leg.

With only seconds and meters to spare, I finish the job, drape her exhausted right arm over my shoulders, and half-drag her up the ramp.  Wheezing and gasping, we flee for our lives, our savaged bodies broken and bleeding while rapidly approaching the absolute limits of our stamina.  At our backs, the enraged mob chases after, several of them so focused on our fleeing backs that they fail to notice the roll of those three-meter-tall tires, which overwhelm and crush them without so much as a bulge of the rubber or a tip of the vehicle.  The Terminal cases are fast, though, much faster than the spacecraft.  Faster than us, as well.