Enemy (14 page)

     Hayes uttered a pained laugh. “Not much worth saving anymore. America the beautiful. Loyalty, freedom, individuality. Greed, corruption, an insatiable desire to achieve globalized manifest destiny. All the things our fathers died for in War Three. You are one of a dying breed, Ms. Flynn.” His smile reassured her that he was being sarcastic, but she could tell that he was being genuine.

     “Has there been any word from above?”

     Hayes looked down and studied the chemlite; the gentle smile disappeared from his face. “The messages stopped coming through yesterday. No one else has come from above. At last word, all of Europe was gone.” She flinched when he said this, but he continued. “In the end, even Indochine was begging for our help, but it appears we have problems of our own.” He indicated the tunnel they were presently inhabiting and the sleeping refugees. “America the beautiful indeed.”

     “What are they?”

     Hayes looked up to the ceiling of the tunnel. An occasional explosion would send grit and dust falling leisurely to the tunnel floor in this windless expanse. Sometimes there was the sound of what appeared to be a lightning strike on the surface. Hayes shook his head and looked back down. “I don’t know what they are. I can’t know what they are. I don’t want to think of them.”

     “I was just—”

     “You were a member of the forces that took Montreal, weren’t you? The Eighth Assault? Don’t worry, I have nothing against the Styx.” His abrupt change of subject startled Flynn. His eyes revealed a calm that she dearly wished that she could possess.

     She looked down at the floor. “Yes. I was in Montreal.”

     He pulled his shirtsleeve up to reveal a neatly branded “XIV” on his left bicep. “I was in Fourteenth Assault. I believe we took the names after you guys kicked the asses. So it was true. Milicom was behind it all… How the hell did you get to Seattle?... You weren’t exiled to that island, were you? The rumors were true.”

     “I was never on Santa Fosca. They hid some of us, sprinkling us around the Allied States. As a hidden line of defense.”

     “What level are you?”

     “K.”

     “Jesus. The highest level I had ever heard of was an H-level.”

     “How much do you know about us?”

     “Only what was published in the medical journals.”

     She was secretly relieved.

     “How many of you were hidden?”

     “I only know of three. Two K’s and an L. There might have been more”

      “You were too much of an investment to kill off.”

     She sat in the dark, contemplating. “Something like that.”

     Hayes laughed, shook his head. She trusted him already. There was just something about him...

     “Well, my new friend, your secret is safe with me. I have other patients to tend to. It was a pleasure to meet you, Ember Magdalene Flynn.”

     Their gazes locked in the shadows.

     “Ember is my Styx code. No one calls me that anymore. Call me Maggie.”

     “Alright. It was a pleasure to meet you, Maggie.”

     He grinned as he walked into the darkness.

     West had seen each of his compatriots neatly cut apart by the Black. It would have been quite an accomplishment for even the most seasoned soldier to escape that barrage. West admitted that he had an advantage.

     He was a K-level Styx.

     Against overwhelming odds, he destroyed the entire squad of the Black single-handedly. They were unprepared for him, a human that could fight back.

     A sound from above drew his attention upward.

     A sleek sliver of black plummeted from the heavens. It fell to earth and buried itself upright into the bombed ruins of Chicago. The earth shook as it broke the surface and finally came to rest. Another two of the vessels flew overhead, traveling west. Their shadows passed over him, blocking out the sun for an instant.

     Strangely, the sun seemed dimmer. Colder. The sky was gauzy, covered in a gray haze that West had never before seen.

     He stood up, stretched, and began to walk.

     He realized that he was one of three people on the planet who could withstand the Black.

     Flynn jumped to her feet.
What was that?

     Another explosion rocked the tunnel. People stood, still groggy from the sleep of exhaustion. They looked like spirits of the damned in the green ghost glow.

     Yet another explosion. The sound of twisting metal came from above them.

     “Run! Get down the tunnel, all of you!”

     Flynn helped Hayes lift an injured man to his feet. People ran, staggered, limped into the blackness of the tunnel, abandoning their shelter.

     A horrendous crash of steel girders and concrete followed them down the tunnel. The Black had breached their stronghold.

     There came to them the sound of lighter crashes and heavy footsteps. Flynn stopped running and fell behind the group.

     “Hurry up! They’re coming!”

     “I know.”

     The Enemy was upon them.

     Hayes stepped into their path as if to protect Flynn. She shoved him out of the way and then the destruction began.

     In the glow of his chemlite, Hayes saw the Black rush at him, humanoid, yet monstrous, innately alien, yet somehow familiar.

     Flynn ran at the Enemy and disappeared.

     Hayes blinked, certain that it had been an optical illusion.

     Women don’t just vanish.

     The first Enemy creatures in the line erupted.

     Limbs flew from the bloody mass that had been the Enemy. The massive body fell only a few feet from Hayes. He was bathed in a warm, sticky fluid as pieces of the Enemy monster flew at him. With a morbid fascination, Hayes realized that the creatures that were the Black bled also.

     Four Enemy left. Hayes stood in terror as one’s head was torn from its body by an unseen force. Another’s chest exploded. The remaining two were cleanly cut in half in mid-stride.

     Hayes stood among the carnage.

     There was a flicker in the dark in front of him.

     She was there, standing calmly, out of breath, shaking visibly. Her hands still flickered, and looking at them was like looking at something though glass on a sunny day. They were there, but not there. In a flash, they solidified. Hayes blinked.

     “That’s why I was too much of an investment to kill off.”

     West gazed at the sun.

     The watch on his wrist had been shattered long ago, but his inner clock told him it was early afternoon, between noon and one o’clock, the part of the day when the sun was the highest in the sky. Brightest in the sky.

     Something was wrong.

     West noted how the sunlight striking him did not warm him, as if it had lost its energy, its warmth, on the ninety-three million mile journey to Earth.

     The sun seemed dim. Used.

     What the hell is going on?

     The world had been in turmoil for one week.

     Apparently mankind had fallen. This fact in and of itself neither shocked nor surprised West, only the manner of the end of society as he knew it mildly disturbed him. He had never been a believer in UFO’s,

     what about the vessel in the mountain((?))

     don’t you want to go back to the light((?))

     wasn’t it the heaven you’ve been searching for all your life((?))
      

     but the visual evidence before him was conclusive. Aliens had conquered the world.

     All he had to do to find proof of this hypothesis was to look up at the sky.

     The sun was fading.

     Great dark shapes could be seen flying above the atmosphere even now in daylight, hideous black nightmare fish floating just beneath the surface of a tranquil forest pool. Smaller dark shapes periodically launched from the larger vessels. Some entered the atmosphere and set about an unknown mission. The gauzy substance in the sky had darkened considerably since he had last looked up.

     He looked east, toward what had once been Chicago. The vessel that had landed there sat vertically amidst the ruins. What were they doing in there?

     The number of vessels circling the planet was increasing, like predators coming for a piece of the kill. West shuddered.

     The sun gazed coldly down upon him.

     He had to find others. There had to be more people left alive, hiding.

     He walked.

     Arizona.

     The Black closed in on a man in the desert.

     The man stood his ground.

     The Black rushed at him. He remained calm. His eyes opened. Two gray orbs stared out upon the scene of destruction. The Enemy had slaughtered the entire group with whom he had been traveling.

     Twenty feet.

     He closed his eyes. When they opened, they burned with an impossible silver fire.

     Ten feet.

     Time stopped. The Black erupted in a flash of silver and violet light. The remnants fell to the ground. The shards of black puddled into mercury and seeped into the thirsty desert floor in a somehow obscene descent.

     Time began once more. The man stood in a circle of black ash twenty feet across.

     He smiled and went on his way.

     His name was Richter.

     He was the L-level Styx.

     black

     tangible. maddening. smothering.

     black

     innate

     they came.

     beyond infinity and possibility. from beginning to end, from time entire, the black converged. wherever they passed, they left a crimson swathe in their wake.

     the Purpose would be completed.

     the prodigal children of Omega would be brought back into the fold.

     within the blackness that was entire, an insanity flourished. thoughts fluttered.

     the putrescence of the possible.

     subordinate to commander, an exchange. a conversation.

    
THE PURPOSE IS SERVED((?))