The Light: The Invasion Trilogy Book 3 (13 page)

“Unless we take them back,” Jacob retorted.

She nodded in agreement. “Yes, of course. Or if you surrender and become a part of us.”

“You’d be surprised what it takes for us to surrender,” James spat back.

Karina openly smiled at his statement. “Surprisingly little; your governments have already petitioned for peace. Your people have been approaching our communities of their own free will offering surrender, and once others hear the peace signal, we expect your remaining forces to join the communal.”

Jacob reached out and put a hand on Rogers’ shoulder. “The people at the orb… the civilians… the ones being escorted by The Darkness—”

“Escorted for their protection,” Karina interrupted. “Tribes and those like you have become a danger to everyone. If you had not fired on our landers…”

Rogers put up a hand between Jacob and the alien. “You said peace signal?”

She nodded, taking her eyes from Jacob’s hateful stare. “Yes, it is being broadcast now, over clear channels, on what you call FM.”

Rogers scrambled to the back, pushing the soldier away from the radio console. “We’ve only been searching our military frequencies; of course we should have looked at the local FM.” He flipped dials and switched a speaker, filling the space with static. He dialed the knob until it locked on a clear, clean channel with a steady voice.

“… lay down your weapons, the armed resistance has been disbanded. We have lost our ability to fight back. For the sake of all of us, I ask that you surrender and go to the road un-armed. You will be given sanctuary; food and shelter will be provided. Our friends have guaranteed our safety. Please… this is the only way to stop the bloodshed.”

Jacob thought he recognized the voice and whispered, “He sounds familiar.”

“It’s the Vice President,” a soldier in the back uttered. “What does this mean?”

Rogers flipped off the radio. “Don’t mean nothing; we go in tomorrow.”

Chapter 25

They stood two deep, partially concealed in the tree lines and overgrown grass. Sunlight reflected off the blued barrels of their rifles. The Darkness had them surrounded, but for some reason still hadn’t moved against them.

Clem stood on a wooden crate, observing them through a hole in the brick wall of the warehouse while the survivors had moved to the rear of the large building. The space, which looked like a loading dock, was filled with vehicles of all make and model, and had two tall overhead doors chained shut at the end of the wall. The women ran about, hurriedly packing their gear and preparing for a hasty withdrawal.

“How many?” Masterson asked. Standing just below Clem, the old soldier was pulling belts of linked ammo from his pack and prepping his machine gun for a fight.

“Got to be over a hundred of ’em.”

“And the uniformed critters?” Masterson asked.

Clem shook his head then leapt off the crate. “None yet.”

Ruth rushed up behind them, followed by a group of girls carrying large duffel bags and boxes of canned goods. She stopped beside them as the other girls continued to load the vehicles. “We’re going to break out,” she said. “If we hurry, we can make the woods before they organize. If their vehicles show up, we won’t have a chance.”

Clem watched as children were loaded into the cabs of vans and pickup trucks parked in long columns just behind the sliding doors of the warehouse. Women with worried expressions stood watch over the vehicles as the precious cargo was loaded.

“No, it won’t work,” Clem said, not taking his eyes from the vehicles.

“What choice do we have? We can’t stand against this many; they’ll have us completely blocked in soon enough.”

Clem looked down, locking eyes with Masterson, who nodded in response. “Get us someplace high; we’ll help you get past them. If you have any of those Molotovs left, we could use them.”

Ruth gazed at them and then back to the overloaded vehicles. “You don’t have to do this. We’d have a chance on the road.”

Clem shrugged. “Like you said, what choice do you have? We can cover you and fight it out on our own. Just get your people someplace safe.”

Ruth frowned and pointed to a wooden crate along the wall. “There… that’s what we have left. At the end of the room you’ll find an iron staircase; it leads to the roof.” She stepped forward and grabbed Clem in a tight-gripped bear hug. “We can’t thank you enough for this,” she whispered to him.

“Just wait for us to open fire then get them out of here. Get as far away from this place as you can,” Clem said.

She let go and gave Masterson the same kind of hug before turning away and barking orders at the girls, rushing them to finish loading. Clem watched her leave before looking over at his friend. “You ready to go to work?”

Masterson dipped his chin and lifted the heavy machine gun to his chest. “Yeah, too much estrogen in this place. Let’s get up top. I need some fresh air.”

Moving past him, Clem slapped his friend on the shoulder. They stopped at the crate, grabbing as many bottles as they could carry, before moving to the staircase. The stairs were old and screeched as they climbed them. The spots where wrought iron brackets met the brick shook and spit crumbled mortar in protest. The stairway ended at a pigeon-feces-covered exit. Clem passed through the doorway and stepped onto the roof. The perimeter of the area was lined with a three-foot-tall, red brick knee wall. In the middle, surrounded by rotting piles of leaves, empty trash cans, and liquor bottles probably left by exploring teens, stood the remains of a crumbled utility building.

Clem heard the truck engines fire up below and knew they were ready. He pointed to a section of the low wall that would be to the right of the overhead doors below. “You post up there; I’ll take the other side.”

Masterson nodded and dropped down, duck-walking to sneak into cover without the Deltas on the ground spotting them. Clem did the same by belly crawling up to the knee wall and letting the barrel of his rifle slowly move into position. He looked across the opening to Masterson and waited for the man to flash him a thumbs up before he crept his head over the ledge.

All along the front the things waited. Still standing shoulder to shoulder in some sort of wall, it would make for easy shooting. From the overhead door, a cracked and broken asphalt drive wended away before vanishing into the thick of the woods, giving the trucks a reasonable chance of escape. When he heard the engines revving below, Clem searched for targets, trying to identify a leader, or an obvious choice to kick off the attack. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a cluster of the Deltas charging forward. He’d waited too long, maybe it was too late.

Masterson also saw the rushing group; without hesitation, he lit the first of his Molotovs and tossed it into the open ground just in front of the advancing group. With the splash of flame, the remaining Deltas began to scream.

A round whizzed over Clem’s head while another struck the brick wall to his front. With no need for instructions, he pulled the rifle into his shoulder and began firing on targets, picking those with automatic weapons first.

Masterson’s machine gun let loose at the same time as the overhead doors began screeching open. The first of the trucks racing forward, Masterson changed the angle of his fire just enough to allow the vehicles to move through the wall of lead he was providing.

The convoy was taking heavy fire. Clem laid down his rifle and rolled to his side, lighting the fire bombs and tossing them in rapid succession to his left and right, trying to create a gauntlet of flames for the vehicles to race down.

Clem watched in horror as the Deltas on the ground began ignoring them. Instead, The Darkness focused all of their fire on the escaping vehicles. A gray cargo van took heavy fire, rounds drumming across its front. Clem figured the driver must have been killed as he watched the van veer hard, nearly rolling before sliding partially off the asphalt and colliding with a tree just short of the opening to the road. Vehicles behind it slammed to a stop, while some tried to steer right of the disabled van, the back half of it now blocking the road.

A wave of at least ten Deltas emerged from the trees, screaming as they charged forward at the van. Clem went back to the weapon, his bolt-action rifle not able to keep up with the mobs. The things reached the van door and began grabbing at the woman and children inside. He no longer had a safe shot and was forced to get off target. He switched his aim in an attempt to support the other vehicles and watched as women exited with weapons in hand, fighting bravely while trying to cover the others as they escaped.

Masterson stayed on the machine gun, screaming as he fired, bringing his aim in as close to the women on the ground as he safely could. “Oh my god, here they come!” he shouted. Clem gaped down and saw the first of the red-sleeved soldiers appear in the tree line, their vehicles just becoming visible in the distant trees. The Deltas were handing off their captives to them. Looking down, Clem could see some of the armed women were falling to the heavy fire, while others were retreating back to the warehouse. He clenched his teeth and looked away from the carnage below, instead focusing on the red-sleeved soldiers standing to his front.

Clem’s guts ached and his throat constricted as he realized they’d failed. This was a fight he knew he couldn’t win. He pushed away the dread and steadied his aim, firing a shot directly into a creature’s chest. He worked the bolt, loading another .308 round and took down another creature before the first had even fallen. A blue splash of plasma erupted to his right, and he felt the heat on his cheek. Ignoring the pain, he reloaded and dropped another of the alien soldiers.

“Clem, we need to move!” Masterson yelled.

He loaded another round and panned left. Having dropped the first group of alien soldiers, he searched the tree line for more. An enemy squad was kneeling in the trees. He locked onto one and saw he was looking down the barrel of an enemy rifle… they fired at the same time. He watched the soldier’s helmeted head snap back from his round as the bolt of blue plasma raced in his direction. With a yank at his boot, Clem was jerked away. He felt himself being dragged across the roof just as the knee wall to his front exploded.

He rolled to his back and looked into the tired face of Masterson. “I said we have to move! There’s nothing else we can do here,” his friend yelled.

“No, I won’t leave!” Clem protested over the sounds of screaming children below. He tried to roll back to his belly and return to the wall. He knew the fight was over, that the Deltas were taking them all away, but he would do whatever he could to stop it.

Masterson low-crawled to his side and, pushing his face in close, said, “We can’t help them if we’re dead.”

Clem acknowledged him with a slow nod, biting into his bottom lip until it bled.

He watched as Masterson searched the roof. The building itself was engulfed in flames, and black smoke was pouring up the stairway they’d used earlier.

“There,” Masterson said, pointing to the back corner of the building, which appeared to be the only place flames weren’t licking over the sides of the roof.

On their stomachs, they crawled together. As they neared the back of the building, the incoming fire stopped and the screams faded into the distance; only the sounds of the roaring fire remained. They moved along in a drainage trench that followed the edge of the roof, finding a hole cut in the side that allowed rainwater to drain from the flat roof. Looking over the edge of the knee wall, they could see what remained of an ancient, tin downspout.

Masterson reached over and nudged it with his boot. He rose up and looked back at Clem. “Looks solid enough. I’ll go first.” The man dropped over the side and disappeared. Not wanting to be left alone, Clem scrambled after him, nearly falling as he grasped the pipe and slid to the ground. He landed hard, feeling his old knees crunch from the speed of the drop. He turned away and pressed his back to the wall while flames and smoke rolled from windows overhead.

Masterson turned an eye back at him. “You okay, old timer?”

Clem flipped him a middle finger. “Lead us out,” he said.

Masterson scaled ahead slowly, patrolling them along the perimeter of the building, rounding the corner, and coming into view of the far side, to the place where the vehicles had attempted to flee from. The enemy was gone; the ground littered with their dead.

Looking toward the blacktop road, Clem stared mesmerized at the burning hulks of the vans and pickup trucks once filled with children. He staggered closer, stopping at the body of a woman he didn’t recognize. He knelt beside her and used his palm to close her eyes.

“Over here,” Masterson said from farther ahead and closer to the building.

In a depression lay the body of Grandmother; the red-haired woman’s chest was covered in blood and she was wheezing. Masterson pulled her from the ditch and rested her head on his lap. He put a hand to her bloody chest then looked up at Clem, shaking his head. She strained to move and pointed at her pack. “Get it for me,” she gasped.

Clem moved to the spot and retrieved a small bag and placed it by her side. She fumbled through a front pouch and fished out the small notebook. She pushed it in Clem’s direction as she coughed and blood curled over her bottom lip. “Get my girls back,” she whispered.

She reached a hand back and Masterson took it. He felt her grasp loosen as the old woman wheezed and drew her last breaths. Slowly and gently, he rolled her head from his lap. “What are we going to do?” he said, examining the destruction surrounded in the flames of the burning vehicles and warehouse.

Clem lowered his head and sucked in a deep breath before dropping to his knees. Falling back on his rear, he flipped through pages of the notebook, stopping at a hand-drawn map of a small, walled village with an orb positioned in the center. “I’m going to get them back, or kill as many of those things as I can trying,” he said.