5 Onslaught (19 page)

30

The first
thing I need to do is get out of the line of fire. Although a part of me wants
to lead the charge, that’s not the strategy we’re playing. This is, in effect,
a tower defense. We’re going to sit tight, hammer them with everything we’ve
got until we run out and if that’s not enough, then we’ll charge. If I were to
storm the enemy, shaking my weapon boldly, it might be inspiring—until I took a
tank round in the back.

With
a leap, I cover the distance between the trenches and the wall, guiding and
slowing my descent with the wind so that I land back in my spot next to
Holloway. The General gives me a nod, which I think is about as much a
compliment as I’m going to get at the moment.

The
air behind the base fills with the reverberating thunder of rising helicopters,
their rotors chopping the air. They lift from the ground and take up hovering
formations three hundred feet above and behind the line of artillery. They’re
armed with an array of small missiles and chain guns that shoot bullets so fast
they’re kind of like laser beams.

Even
louder than the choppers is the roar of jets lifting off from several aircraft
carriers. Each jet will fly in a holding pattern until they’re called on. They
pack a serious punch and can outrun any flying Nephilim, but our real firepower
comes from the Navy Destroyers. Not only do they have some really big guns,
they can launch missiles designed to flatten buildings. There are also several
submarines lurking in the depths.
Nuclear
submarines.
While they won’t play a role in the
coming battle, they’re our contingency plan: Cleansing Fire. If we lose the
fight, and the fate of the human race is at stake, they will launch their
nuclear payloads, essentially erasing the battlefield along with everything in
and around it. The plan belongs to Holloway, and while the idea of it makes me
cringe—I read the books and saw the pictures of Hiroshima when I was a kid—I
couldn’t argue with the logic.

But it’s not going to get to that
point,
I tell myself.
I won’t let it.

A
rumble beneath my feet pulls my attention forward. Despite the din of modern
war machines, a kind of peace settles over the troops as we wait for our enemy.

Rumble.

C’mon,
I think,
where are you?

And
then, it’s impossible to miss. A behemoth steps into the gap, nearly filling
it. Its massive white body gleams in the rising sun. Its long tentacles of red
hair writhe around its body. It’s solid black, orb eyes, a blank like a shark’s
so that you never really know if it’s looking at you while at the same time,
you have no doubt that it’s looking at you. The top of its head tilts back, the
mouth opening wide to reveal teeth the size of sailboat sails. Ropes of drool
ooze down from the top like waterfalls. And then it lets out a bellow that’s
high pitched and a deep rattle all in one.

Yeah
, I think,
Nephil is
angry
. But he’s got a decent strategy, too. I have no doubt that this
behemoth will be followed by a mad rush of Nephilim. But this is also our
chance to slow them down and kill their momentum.

Behemoth-Alpha,
I think.
Go.

As though in response to my mental
command, the behemoth takes a giant step forward.
And then another. A third brings it
just inside the bottleneck and a fourth, all the way through.

But
then, six fighter jets whose make and models are unknown to me, but which
look really sleek, streak past
overhead.

The
behemoth takes a fifth step and I realize that just fifteen more will bring it
to our doorstep.

The
six jets unload with everything they have, launching missiles and peeling up
and away. The missiles twist and swirl through the air, leaving white contrails
in their wake, like long tails. And then, one by one, they find their target in
the midsection of the giant beast. A ball of fire and billowing black smoke
obscures the giant, but its wail reveals the strike caused it pain.

I
watch in silence, waiting for some sign of success. I don’t wait long, but what
I see is not success. The behemoth takes another step. It slides out of the
black curtain of smoke revealing its prodigious belly. If the missiles caused
it any harm at all, there’s no evidence of it. The monster has completely
healed.

“How
the hell are we supposed to take off that thing’s head,” Holloway mutters.

“We
might not have to,” I tell him. To my knowledge, only warriors need to be
decapitated, or have their weak spots pierced. Other variations of Nephilim can
heal, but not as quickly, or as completely.

“How
do you mean?” Holloway asks.

“We
don’t give it time to heal,” I tell him, and then I send an order to the tank
gunners, helicopter crews, artillery crews and fighter jet pilots.
Fire!

This
time, I have to put my hands to my ears. The volume of this many tank cannons,
artillery shells, missiles, jets and helicopters is more than my ears can bear.
Unless... Yes, I think I can—
Whump!

“What
just happened?” Holloway asks me, and I can hear him perfectly. He didn’t even
have to shout.

“I
turned down the volume,” I say. He looks at me like I’m crazy. “I created a
dome of compressed air over the base and the trenches. The sound waves are
either being slowed to the infrasonic range or they’re being redirected.”

A
bright flash turns our attention forward. The continuous volley reaches the
behemoth. I can see it roaring in pain, and can even hear it some, but my ears
are spared.

I
quickly communicate the reason for the strange silence to the troops, so that
they’re not disturbed by it. When I’m done, Holloway says, “
Now
it makes sense.”

More
missiles pass by. These are larger, the kind that no fighter jet could carry.
I’m not sure what they are, but they’re big, and powerful. And there are twenty
of them racing from the Destroyers at sea toward their impossible-to-miss
target.

Explosions
rock the valley. Despite the sound being muffled, I can still feel the force of
each blast. These last twenty
dwarf
even the footfall
of a behemoth. Rock slides race down the sides of the distant cliffs. The human
race is dishing out some serious might.

And
yet, the behemoth staggers forward. But it’s not immune to the attack.
Volcanoes of purple blood erupt from each wound. Chunks of boulder-sized white
flesh, the same stuff I subsisted on during my first
months
underground, fall to the ground.

Another step.

The
wounds are healing. This isn’t going to work. It’s going to stumble forward
until we’re out of ammunition and then just roll its fat body over us.

Behemoth-Beta!
I think.

The
jets arc away, while the rest of the big guns hold their fire. If this next
trick doesn’t work, we’ll be in real trouble.

But
then I add a second order,
Backfield-Alpha.
The jets moving away from the fight turn in a wide arc that brings them
around toward the back of the valley. Missiles launch and lines of tracer fire
glow orange as they shoot at targets on the ground
behind
the choke point. The planes will continue to strike the
backlines of the Nephilim forces, returning to the aircraft carriers to rearm,
refuel, and then head back to the fight.

The
artillery opens fire again, having taken time to adjust their aim.
A fresh volley of rounds arcs up and over the battlefield, dropping
down behind the cliffs and striking even more enemies that are out of sight.

While
all this is happening, a single jet, which I actually recognize as a Russian
MiG fighter thanks to
Top Gun
,
cruises through the battlefield from the south. It cuts beneath the soaring
artillery shells, yet above the behemoth. The pilot has guts.

As
it passes over the behemoth it drops a single bomb. The silver cylinder glows
blue for a moment because of friction, and then strikes the behemoth’s head and
detonates. At the moment of impact, white phosphorous inside the bomb ignites a
gel composed of benzene, gasoline and polystyrene. This highly flammable mix
sprays out in all directions, coating the behemoth in
a fiery
slurry that will burn, white hot, for ten minutes.

The
monster’s shrill cry pierces my dome of dense air and makes me cringe. Were
this any creature but a Nephilim, I would feel immense pity. The creature
stumbles forward and then topples over. It crashes to the ground, sending a
wave of pressure through the earth that rattles the base and knocks over some
of the structures and piled supplies.

I
kick up a strong wind from the ocean to keep the dust cloud at bay, forcing it
back and down to the earth from where it came. As the behemoth twitches and
burns, I watch its flesh fight to repair itself. It’s a slow battle between
fire and flesh, but after nearly a minute, the rocket-fuel’s fire wins. With a
groan, the behemoth lets out its last breath and seems to deflate.

As
the body shrinks in on itself, several of the long red stands of its living,
hair stretch outward. At first I think it’s simply twitching as the body dies,
but then I realize it’s a last act of defiance. The long, python-like hair
sweeps in a wide arc, striking the rows of razor wire. The sharp coils of metal
tangle with the hair like Velcro and are torn away. In a single attack, the
monster removes all but one row of razor wire, effectively destroying our first
line of defense. Then it stops moving completely.

“It’s
dead,” I say, honestly a little surprised.

“Napalm
tends to do that to things,” Holloway says.

Before
we have a chance to celebrate, the behemoth moves. Its belly twitches and jerks
as though something inside is fighting to get out. No, not
as if
... It’s
exactly
like something is trying to get out.

And
then, it does.

31

A wet
tear punctuates the emergence of a massive sword from the insides of the
behemoth. It slides through the thick flesh horizontally, carving a neat line.
A second sword emerges. Then a third, all slicing the monster open like a
Tauntaun on Hoth. It happens fast.
In seconds.
And in
that short time, I’m too stunned to react.

The
cut flesh separates, but there’s no blood, nor fluid of any kind. Instead,
there is a battle cry.
A human battle cry.
Three sets of
Nephilim hands lift the flesh up, supporting its weight on their unfurled
wings, while all around them, an army of
hunters
surges out.

A Trojan horse.
Nephil wasn’t
overreacting,
he’s simply one step ahead. And his tactics, while gruesome, are effective. The
hunters leaping from the insides of the behemoth, are within striking distance
of the trenches and only a single coil of razor wire stands in their path—an
insignificant obstacle.

As
the first of the hunters closes in on the razor wire and easily leaps it, I
think,
Merrill, shofar!

The
horn blasts immediately, but is muffled. Remembering my sound dampening effect,
I free the compressed dome of air and allow the full power of the shofar to go
roaring up through the valley.

The
attacking hunters fall to the ground, the red beginning to fade from their
hair. The Nephilim inside the behemoth shriek and shrink back, letting the
giant folds of behemoth skin fall atop hunters still climbing out.

This
will be another victory for us. Our army will grow once again and Nephil will
be forced to stop using hunters against us.

When the horn blast stops, the sound of
shouting voices, pounding helicopters and roaring jets take its place.
But I barely hear them. My attention
is on the few thousand hunters still on their knees.

I’m
about to call out to them, to welcome them as freed brothers and sisters when
the unthinkable happens. A splash of red appears and then washes over the group
like a giant invisible painter is brushing their heads with blood.
All
of them are reverting back to their
corrupted selves.

Merrill! Again!

The
horn blast sounds, long and powerful.

The
hunters resist. There is the occasional flicker of normal hair color, but it
doesn’t last long.

I don’t understand! Why is the shofar
not working?

“On
the cliffs!” someone shouts when the sound of the shofar fades again.

I
glance up to the top of the cliffs. Winged warriors line the precipices on
either side of the valley, their wings outstretched. Their presence is ominous
and hellish, but they’re not what
holds
my attention.
It is the much smaller, much more numerous, force of gatherers that catch my
eye. There are thousands of them, each between six and ten feet tall. Their
skinny gray bodies are almost invisible with all the rising smoke, but their
black, oval eyes cut through the distance.

Gatherers
have the ability to communicate telepathically. That’s how Xin, who was part
gatherer, gained his ability, which he somehow passed on to Luca, who is fully
human. But gatherers can also manipulate minds, implant thoughts, erasing them
or controlling their targets completely. And right now, high up on the cliff,
they’re out of the shofar’s range, even amplified as it is.

They’re keeping the hunters corrupt,
I think.

Along
with this realization comes a droning buzz inside my head. They’re trying to
control us, too!

Guard your thoughts
, I shout mentally to my troops,
warning them of the danger.
Resist their
control!
From such a great distance, my unwilling force should be hard to
control completely, but the distraction could prove fatal.
Snipers, clear the gatherers from the cliffs.

A
second later, the first sniper round is fired. I see a single gatherer drop to its
knees and tumble over the side. Gatherers can heal, but much more slowly than
warriors. If the bullet didn’t kill it, the impact with the ground should. More
snipers follow the order and a constant stream of bullets fly toward the
cliffs, followed by a constant rain of gray bodies falling down. But there are
so many gatherers, that each death counts for little.

Solomon.

It’s
Luca.

I can feel them. They’re trying to find
me.

He’s
talking about the gatherers, I’m sure. They can probably sense his presence.
Maybe even feel his thoughts and understand what he’s doing for us. If they
were to somehow interfere with Luca, or hurt him, we would lose our ability to
communicate quickly and universally to our multilingual force. The result would
be chaos. But I’m not sure what more we can do, aside from killing as many
gatherers as possible. We could napalm them, I suppose, but my lungs already
sting from the first toxic cloud produced by the first bomb. And our supply is
limited. We need to save it for the second Behemoth. Missiles are an option,
too, but we could create a rockslide, covering the battlefield, or our base,
with mounds of stone, a condition that would benefit our much larger
adversaries. I hate it, but Luca is going to have to fight, too.

You’re stronger than they are,
I tell him.

But there are so many.

Not for long,
I think.
Fight as hard as you can.
I send an order through him to the
helicopter pilots, directing them to climb and strafe the cliffs with their
chain guns.

Before
I can think of another countermeasure for the gatherers, a battle cry tears my
attention forward again.

The
hunters are charging.

Merrill, keep it coming!

The
horn sounds again. A few hunters stumble, but the effect is negligible. The gatherers
are keeping the shofar’s effect at bay.

This
is the unthinkable moment I have been dreading.

The
lead hunter, who is past the single row of razor wire, charges toward the
trenches, sword
raised
.

My
mind, for all its brilliance, can only think of one solution. And with just
seconds remaining, I give the order.

Fire.

A barrage of bullets fly
from the entrenched soldiers.

Scores
of hunters fall, their human blood soaking the soil of Antarctica, but more
take their place.
So many more.
The Nephilim inside
the behemoth have reopened the wound, allowing more fighters to emerge. The
warriors are screaming in pain, writhing against the sound of the horn, but I
suspect that they too, are getting outside support.

A
shadow draws my eyes up.

As
the helicopters rise toward the top of the cliffs and open fire, lines of
gatherers fall before their modern might. But the winged warriors with them
quickly take action. Several stand in the way of the streaming bullets, using
their bodies to shield their brethren, enjoying the pain and quickly healing
from the wounds. Others take to the sky, attacking the choppers.

A
scream pulls my attention forward again.

I
spot a hunter in the trenches, slashing back and forth with a long sword until
he’s shot. But the damage was done. Ten of my men are dead along with him, and
more hunters are closing in, charging in columns protected at the front by
hunters wielding large shields strong enough to deflect bullets. Seeing that
there are just seconds before the trenches are overrun, I use my powers, which
I’ve been reserving for the even more difficult battles to come.

A
gust of wind slams into the front line of hunters, tossing them into the air
like feathers in front of a fan. Even before they land, more take their place.
I cut the wind, allowing my men to fire again. And then, when the hunters get
too close again, I knock them back. We could sustain this tactic until all the
hunters were dead, but danger is coming from all directions.

“Look
out!” Holloway shouts. He tackles me from the side, taking us both off the
wall. We drop, twenty feet toward the ground, but I manage to arrest our fall
before we land hard. Our feet never reach the ground. An explosion rips through
the wall, sending us flying. I catch a glimpse of a ruined helicopter as it
strikes the wall and explodes. People and shrapnel fly in all directions. The
wall crumbles beneath the chopper’s weight. I once again manage to catch us
with a gust of wind, but the sound and the force of the nearby explosion has
sent my head spinning.

Back
on my feet, I stagger and release Holloway from my arms. But while I’m unsteady
on my feet, Holloway is limp. He falls to the side, landing hard. I dive to his
side, putting my hand on his back to steady him. But my hand doesn’t reach his
back. A large chunk of metal shrapnel is in the way. I look at the wound. Some
random chunk of helicopter protrudes from his back. It’s large and embedded
deep, next to his spine.

Holloway
grips my arm. That he’s still alive is a miracle. I turn him slightly and look
into his eyes. “Fight,” he says, and blood drips from his lips. “You fight.”
His voice is filled with fury. “To the last man.
To the last
woman.
With everything you have.
Fight!”

Holloway
goes slack in my arms. The General is dead. But his words still ring in my
ears.

Fight!

I
place the General down, pull Whipsnap from my belt and scream, with my mouth
and my mind, “Hunters!
Attack!”