Cascade box set 2, p.28
Cascade Box Set 2, page 28
As Bower approached Diaz, he slowed as the large creature swung its head around, and started to growl. He crouched down and reached out for Diaz’s shoulder, which he then gently shook. “You still with us Diaz.”
She groaned in response, and her head moved from side to side.
Bullets skimmed past his head, while another bounced off the creature.
“Diaz! Looks like you took one in your right shoulder. You with us enough to send this creature towards those shooting at us.”
Diaz’s eyes flickered open. She looked up at the creature looming over her. She then winced in pain and closed her eyes. The creature shook its head slightly, then turned towards those twenty or so feet away.
Bower kneeled closer to Diaz. “Hey soldier, how you holding up?”
She sat up, and pushed herself back against the wall. “Oh… this is nothing,” she said grimacing. They both looked along the corridor as the creature roared in the same direction. Those that were firing stopped, but held their ground.
Bower took the opportunity to try to communicate. “We’re here to help you!” He shouted.
“We don’t need your help boy, just be on your way!”
Zach recognized Hemming’s voice. He crawled forward, keeping as close to the wall as possible. “Hemming’s? It’s Zach Felton.”
Two shots rang out, just missing Zach’s head.
“This is all your fault! You and that woman! I’m going to kill—”
A shot rang out before Hemming’s could finish. Zach looked behind him to those lying on the floor. Freeman raised his head from his scope and nodded.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Zach stood in Hemming’s makeshift zoo and looked at metal bars twisted and bent into impossible angles. Amongst them were the ashes and bones of creatures. He still had his scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth, he had too. The smell from the still smoldering E.L.F’s were making him dizzy as it was, and he had only been exploring the area for a few minutes.
Diaz stood with him, holding her shoulder. “I’m not sensing anything alive down here. Looks like a few got out, but most died in the fire.” She sighed. “Usually I wouldn’t give a shit about E.L.F’s, but there’s something about this situation that is very wrong.”
Zach nodded. “Let’s get back to the others.”
After the short walk back to the maintenance bay they then walked outside, and stopped on the forecourt. A steady stream of men, women and children walked slowly up the slope to the road and grass area, joining the hundreds that were already there.
“Gonna take a while to get this amount of people back to the outpost.”
“Yup.”
“If we hadn’t gone inside, that madman and his goons would have killed them all.” She looked down. “I had my doubts about going inside. I was wrong.”
Zach looked at her and smiled. “Nothing wrong with being careful.”
They walked across and joined the throngs leaving the still smoking building. Zach spotted Abbey talking to a middle-aged man with blond hair, and walked over to them.
“This is Morri, he…”
Morri stepped forward holding his hand out. “Boyd Morrison, but my friends call me Morri.”
Zach shook his hand. “How do you know Abbey?”
“Well I was kind of a coach for the creature coaches. I err, gave her that jacket!” He pointed to the leather jacket she was wearing.
Abbey noticed Zach wasn’t sure how to react. “Morri helped me survive inside the arena.”
“I see.”
“I was well pleased when I saw the lass survived! That was some escape you and Miles pulled off. Shame about your creature, he seemed to be one of the good ones… So you’re from a camp down south?”
Zach went to reply when Bower called for him nearby. “Good meeting you.” Zach said then turned and walked over to Bower.
“It’s the last remaining of the major camps,” said Abbey.
“I heard about them, some got nuked last I heard as they were overrun.”
“It’s not been easy, but we managed to survive, everyone here is welcome to go there.”
Morri smiled. “Sounds like my kinda place.”
Over the following few hours while the sun disappeared beneath the horizon, trucks came and went from the arena until everyone was at Brad’s outpost. Makeshift tents had been erected in the grounds of the large house for the people that couldn’t be housed inside, and campfires burned.
Zach stood with Hayes in the kitchen.
“I’ve given what oxygen we had to as many as I could to help with the smoke inhalation problems, and we’re treating the burns best we can. Some of these people will be better suited back at the camp,” said Hayes.
“I’ve arranged a convoy to return to the camp tomorrow with those that are okay to travel.”
Fiona appeared with a map in her hand. “Hold that thought. There’s a county airport just a few miles from here.”
Zach smiled. “Get in contact with the camp, see if they have any transport planes free, and if they do, tell them to bring a medical team.”
Fiona disappeared back into the noise and busy people that now inhabited the former home, Hayes followed her.
Brad appeared in the hallway, with a pile of papers in his hand.
“Have you seen Abbey?” Zach shouted.
“I think I saw her outside, with her bird thing,” he said not looking up from what he was studying.
Zach walked out into the night air and listened. Hundreds of people milled around. Small groups were huddled around fires, while others seemed to be helping with construction that was still progressing under flaming torches. He then heard squawks above him. He looked up, and his heart leaped into his mouth. Abbey was perched with legs dangling over one of the roof arches sixty feet up.
He went to shout, but then realized that would cause everyone to look up as well, so instead he walked quickly into the house and ascended the stairs two steps at a time. Stepping over people on the landing, he opened the door to the attic and ran up the narrow staircase, coming out into a dark and dusty space that was only a few yards wide. He immediately felt the draft coming through the window at the far end. He moved to it quickly and looked out. Abbey was about fifteen feet away across the roof.
“Abbey?” he kept his voice low to try and not surprise her.
“Oh hey Zach boy…” she said turning around, with a small glass bottle in one hand, while the other only just about gripped the edge of the roof.
He could tell whatever was in that bottle was not water.
“Hey, you okay? Probably best if you came inside,” he said trying to plot a course across the roof which didn’t involve him falling to his death.
“Nah, I’m good. Too many people in there, out there, everywhere! Ha.”
Zach pushed one leg across the window frame, and felt for something solid to put his weight on, on the other side.
Abbey turned back to facing the area outside the front of the house. Mo sat on the roof of a nearby window arch. “Did you know they say that Stalin killed around nine million people?”
Zach stopped climbing out of the window to look up. “What?”
She tried to take a sip from the bottle. “Ugh, I knew I should have brought up two!” She then tossed it into the dark. The sound of a thud quickly followed. She looked over the edge. “Hmm didn’t break.”
Voices came from below.
“Where was I. Right, yeah he killed a lot. And there was that other guy, you know the Nazi that killed millions, but none on my scale. No one truly global until I came along. Cheers to me!”
Zach inched along the top of the roof. Almost with her. “Why don’t we go back inside—”
“My friggin boss. If he had just not done what he did, then I wouldn’t have done what I did and the satellites wouldn’t have done what they did…”
Zach was just a lunge away from her. Keep her talking. “Satellites?”
“Yes!” She whipped around with such speed that she slipped from her position and began falling over the side. Zach dived forward, while screams from the ground below rose into the sky.
Scrambling to the edge, he looked over not wanting to see. Relief washed over him. Mo had her arm gripped within one of his clawed hands, and was slowly descending to the ground.
Abbey landed gently and looked angrily at the small crowd that was around her. “What you all looking at!” she then staggered forward a few feet and picked up her bottle. “Anyone got a refill?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Clovis and Lilly strolled confidently down the middle of main street in the town of Marlin, Colorado. Shadows were long as the sun was about to make its first appearance for the day, and the sky was clear.
Small apartment blocks and homes sat on both sides of the four lane road. Soon they arrived at a junction. Lilly spun around looking in all four directions. “Which way boss?”
Clovis briefly closed his eyes. “Forward,” he growled through his hair that now hung down around his face and neck, free of its usual piece of string that kept it together.
They came up to a row of stores, on both sides of the street. Clovis stopped.
Lilly turned around. “Why we stopping?”
“Wait.”
She then heard a noise which made her whip her head around, and reach into the rear of her pants where her handgun was located. A spark flew up near her feet, followed by the sound of a gunshot. She crouched down looking for the source.
“Don’t try reaching for any weapon girl!” shouted a voice from somewhere around them. “You! The big fella, if you got a gun, put it on the ground and kick it forward, you do the same girl!”
“You just said don’t reach for—”
“Just do it!”
Lilly frowned and went to pull her gun from her pants.
“Don’t,” said Clovis, making her freeze. He then looked around him. There was movement on some of the roofs. Up ahead a vehicle was approaching.
“We’re a bit exposed out here,” said Lilly.
Clovis stood tall and motionless.
A green pickup pulled up twenty feet from them. Two men jumped out of the back both with rifles, while two more got out of the front. The driver, a man with a white beard, walked forward towards them slowly with his shotgun aimed squarely at Clovis’s chest.
“I reckon you took a wrong turn son.”
“You have guns? Food? Water?”
The man frowned. “It don’t matter—”
A blood-curdling scream came from somewhere on one of the roofs. The men’s guns swung towards the right. Another scream came from the left together with a gunshot. The men flipped their attention to that direction.
“What the hell…” said the man.
“Look!” said one of the other men.
Rising up on the roofs on both sides of the street, were beasts. Each one the size of a large car, with bear like heads and bodies, but with six legs.
“He’s one of them!” said another of the now panicking men.
The man with the beard raised his gun. “Look we don’t want any trouble, we got some supplies you can have, then you leave us be, yeah?”
“Where is your base?”
“Just umm, just a few streets over.”
Clovis grinned.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Abbey’s eyes opened into the gloom of the bedroom, but even that was too bright and she promptly shut them again. A pain in her head coordinated with her heartbeat as she laid, trying to remember what happened fourteen hours earlier.
Flashes of being up high and then falling entered and left her mind, although maybe that last part was a dream, she wasn’t sure. A knock came at the door, causing her to duck down slightly under the covers.
“You awake?” said Brad through the door.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted to reply. “Yes,” she said. Just the single word causing an extra throb in her head.
The door opened, and Brad walked in with a tray, which he put down on the end of the bed.
“There are some painkillers there with some water, and some cookies.”
She pushed herself up. “Thanks.”
“How are you?”
She picked up the pills, and swallowed them quickly with the water. “Fine.”
“I meant, how are you in other ways? If it weren’t for your E.L.F you might not be here with us right now.”
She looked at him surprised. “What did I do?”
Brad got to his feet. “Maybe you should talk to Zach.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Getting ready to go to the airport, the medical team from Bravo arrives in a few hours. Zach, Bower and his squad need to get there early and secure the runway.” He walked to the door before stopping and turning back around. “Do you really need to go to Boston?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
Brad nodded, then left closing the door behind him.
Abbey picked up a slice of toast and put it back down. Words, sights and sounds moved through her mind from the night before, each one accompanied by a pulse of pain.
She threw the covers back and swung her legs around until they rested on the rug on the floor. She looked at the world outside through the window. Fluffy clouds mixed with blue sky.
Walking to it, she looked out. Hundreds of people milled around, most with purpose. Wooden frames were already vertical for the buildings being constructed. She spotted Zach walking to a Humvee.
Quickly she got dressed, trying to ignore the pain in her head and ran down to the hallway, and then outside. She briefly looked up at the high window arch, and then back towards the Humvee. Zach was waving. As she walked towards him whispers and strange looks came from those around her.
“How you feeling?” he said.
“How you would expect I guess. You’re heading out to the airfield?”
Zach looked at Bower who nodded and got into the other Humvee. “Yeah. Need to get these people better medical supplies and help. There’s also a convoy that’s left the camp with a lot of serious hardware that’s going to make a real difference around here.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah, umm… we should talk later.”
He knows. He knows what I did.
“Sure.”
Zach briefly kissed her on the cheek and got into the Humvee next to Fiona.
Abbey watched as the two vehicles along with a truck carrying troops moved out.
*****
Zach looked out at the largely flat landscape with warehouses and the occasional clump of trees. “There’s plenty of room for expansion around here.”
Fiona nodded.
As they skirted the outskirts of the town, small pleasant looking homes passed by, until they turned off between a row of trees, and drove up a narrow road to a small arch roofed building.
Zach and Fiona got out, as did the others. Troops fanned out from the truck and kneeled looking at the landscape around them.
Large aircraft hangers sat in the distance as well as a number of single-engine planes that laid like scattered toys across the runway.
“We need to get those planes moved,” said Zach. He looked at the time on his radio. 11: 20 am, an hour before the transport plane from Texas was scheduled to land. “There should be ropes and chains in the truck, we’ll use them to move what we can’t shift by hand.”
Bower nodded, and set about giving the troops different tasks to get the airfield cleared.
Diaz approached Zach scratching the back of her neck.
“What is it?”
She scrunched up her face. “Hmm, dunno.”
“E.L.F’s?”
“Nah. Well I dunno, I don’t think so. Maybe something way, way off in the distance.”
“Let me know if it becomes more than an itch.”
She nodded.
Zach walked towards a small building that would have been the check in point for pilots and passengers. The inside was largely untouched, with flight school brochures spread out over a wooden counter. In the corner a large dead plant sat with brown dry leaves. He walked back out and followed were he saw Bower go, which was into one of the large hangers.
The huge doors were raised and inside sat a small passenger jet, the type which magazines aimed at the super rich usually had on their covers. The stairs to gain entry were down, and all around the ground at the base were dark red stains.
Bower appeared from the plane. “You don’t mind if I take this back with me do you?” he shouted to Zach, who smiled.
The roar of engines came from outside, together with the sound of men and women straining. It wasn’t long before the wreckages were moved off to the grassy verge, and the landing strip was clear.
Bower, Diaz and Zach stood outside the front of the small building.
Zach looked at his radio, then the cloudy sky. “It’s just gone noon, we should pick them up on the radios soon.”
“This is Brigadier General Felton at the airfield near the Kentucky outpost for the transport plane outbound from Camp Bravo. Over.”
Only static came from the radio’s speaker. He noticed Diaz was rubbing her neck again. “You sensing something?”
“Yeah I think.” She walked forward onto the airfield and looked around, while pulling her cap off and putting it back on her head, the opposite way around. “From the—”
Zach’s radio came to life. “This is Captain Carver on route from Camp Bravo, of the transport plane Whiskey Alfa Two Nine Nine, we are roughly… twenty minutes out from your destination. Over.”
“Hear you loud and clear Captain. How’s the flight been? Over.”
“Had some trouble near Dallas but we have a Cascader onboard that helped out. Over.”
“Is your Cascader sensing anything now? Over.”
“Hold on. Over.”
A few moments of silence passed before the Captain came back. “She said there might be something some miles to the north-east. Over.”
“Our Cascader is saying the same. Okay, stay sharp we will try to find out what we’re dealing with and get back to you. Over.”
