Resistance (19 page)

“Are you crazy?” the young man demanded. “There's an innocent man out there!”

“And there's twenty innocent people in here,” Stillman responded urgently. “They're using him as bait! They want you to open the door so they can get in.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he's dead already,” Stillman answered soberly. “And there's nothing we can do about it.”

The security guard had stopped struggling by that time and stared in horror as the Spinners allowed Norton to plead.

“Please! I have a family … Don't let me die.” Norton
tugged at the bars as his eyes went from face to face. “Why?” he wanted to know. “Why won't you let me in?”

Then, as the Chimera realized that Norton was of no further use to them, they took him down. A man began to retch and a woman sobbed pitifully as the Spinners went to work. Norton screamed while the Chimera wound layer after layer of glistening pinkish brown webbing around his body, but it wasn't long before the sounds were silenced, as it became impossible for him to breathe. Then all the struggling came to a stop as a large group of Spinners bore the newly cocooned body away.

The gibbering sounds continued unabated, but the gate held, so most of the people pulled back from the bars as the security guard put in a call to the police. A waste of time, in Stillman's opinion, since there were bound to be other spires, and the police sure as hell had to know about them.

“Hey,” Bristow said. “Have you seen my camera? I lost it.”

“No,” Stillman said matter-of-factly, “I haven't.”

“Then how ′bout a smoke?” Bristow inquired.

Stillman removed a pack of Camels from his pocket, shook one of them loose, and offered it to Bristow. “You smoke? Since when?”

“Since five minutes ago,” Bristow said, as he accepted both the cigarette and the light. Then, having pulled some smoke into his lungs, he began to cough.

Stillman was putting the pack back into his pocket when he felt the recorder—and realized he had tucked the device away prior to the desperate run up the stairs. He pulled it out, turned the recorder on, and held the microphone to his lips. “This is Henry Stillman … Today, during a tour of the newly refurbished Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the President of the
United States paused for a moment to reassure reporters and citizens alike as to the integrity of the much vaunted defense perimeter.

“No sooner had the President concluded his remarks than a huge spire fell out of the sky, landed about five hundred feet from the memorial, and killed at least a dozen people. Soon—within a matter of minutes—thousands of eggs poured out of the missile. They hatched quickly, releasing hundreds of vicious creatures, which are outside the memorial now.

“I'm approaching the gate as I speak, and the next thing you will hear is the sound of screeching, as the Chimeran horde tries to get in. It's a horrible sound, ladies and gentlemen—and one I hope none of you have occasion to hear in person.”

The Spinners grew more agitated as Stillman neared the gate, the intensity of the gibbering sound increased, and the reporter extended the microphone in an attempt to capture the sound for the benefit of his audience.

But suddenly there was the roar of a diesel engine from somewhere just out of sight. Moments later, the Spinners fell away from the gate like a wave being sucked back into the sea, as an armored personnel carrier bucked its way up the stairs. Spinners screeched angrily as they were crushed by the half-track's metal treads, and a vehicle-mounted machine gun began to yammer madly, with hundreds of Chimera disappearing into a blood-mist cloud.

Orders were shouted as a dozen soldiers wearing black hoods jumped down from the half-track to battle the Chimera with shotguns, Bellocks, and flamethrowers. Stillman heard a flurry of gunshots followed by a loud
whump
as a gout of flame consumed more than fifty Spinners and filled the air with the throat-clogging stench of burned flesh.

The battle ended five minutes later when the last stink was hunted down and dispatched with a blast from a Rossmore.

Keys rattled as the security guard unlocked the gates and swung them open. Stillman was one of the first to leave and found it difficult to walk without stepping on a body. The stairs were slick with blood and littered with hats, purses, and other debris. By placing each foot with care, he was able to make his way halfway down the stairs to the point where a badly mangled camera lay. As Bristow arrived, he bent to pick up the object. “Here,” he said, “I believe this belongs to you.”

Bristow accepted what remained of his camera and took a long slow look around. “We're lucky to be alive.”

Stillman was silent for a moment as sirens wailed in the distance, a woman sobbed as she cradled a dead child in her arms, and a flight of Sabre Jets roared overhead.

“Maybe,” Stillman replied somberly, “or maybe the lucky ones are already dead.”

The shimmery blue Stalker crawled crablike up over a rocky ridge. Then, having successfully crossed the barrier, its articulated legs made
whine-thud-whine
sounds as they spidered down the steep slope toward the ravine below.

Occasional bursts of static, fractured sentences, and the sounds of fighting could be heard over the headphones Hale wore, but there was no way to tell who was winning the battle miles to the east. Two additional machines, both of which had been captured months earlier, followed along behind his.

The notion of using Chimeran vehicles to penetrate the enemy base near Hot Springs, South Dakota, had been Hale's idea, yet now as he and his team battled the rough terrain, he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of the plan.

The goal had been to surprise the Chimera by arriving in three of their own vehicles—thus avoiding the antiaircraft batteries located on top of the target building. But after hours of tedious cross-country travel, their slow progress was eating up valuable time, and Hale was worried lest he and his team miss the narrow window of
opportunity created by Lieutenant Colonel Jack Hawkins and the 5th Ranger Battalion.

Hawkins's job was to advance up the main highway from Chadron, Nebraska. Then, as the stinks located in and around Hot Springs streamed south to engage the invaders, pre-positioned American troops would sweep in to crush them from both sides. Which was why the attack had been code-named Operation Iron Fist.

Meanwhile, as the battle took place, Hale and his team were supposed to sweep around to the west in an effort to bypass the action. If all went as planned, they would enter Hot Springs unopposed, break into the storage building, and snatch one of the fuel cores before the Chimera could bring a large force back to oppose them.

It was all dependent on good communications and perfect timing. Except that the radio link to Battalion Command was spotty at best, and according to Hale's wristwatch, the team was running fifteen minutes late. Hale glanced to his right.

Despite the way the Stalker was lurching up, down, and sideways, Dr. Barrie appeared to be completely unruffled.

“I've been studying the map,” Barrie said, “and I have a suggestion.”

Hale sent the Stalker sideways to avoid a cluster of boulders, and did his best to sound casual. He still wasn't entirely clear whether she was his superior, equal, or subordinate. “Yeah?” he said. “What's that?”

“The top of the next ridge is one of the highest points between us and our objective. Once we hit the top of this slope, let's park the Stalkers just below the skyline, and take a look. Then if everything looks okay, we'll commit.”

That made sense. According to his own calculations,
and the map-board strapped to his right thigh, they were coming up on the separation point. Beyond that spot, the Stalkers would pass the Rangers off to the east, and be entirely on their own.

A meaningless exercise unless the overall plan was working.

“Okay,” he said. “That makes sense, but only if we can't reach BatCom, since we're running fifteen minutes late.”

Hale made two attempts to contact BatCom subsequent to that, received nothing but gibberish in return, and was forced to conclude that the Chimera were jamming Ranger communications. So with no other course open to him, and having found a ledge on which the Stalkers could pause, Hale brought his machine to a halt.

Fortunately the highly localized squad-level frequency that connected him with the other two machines was working fine.

“Echo-Six, to Echo-Five, and Echo-Four … Here's your chance to take a break. The doctor and I are going to take a look over the ridge. I want one unit manned and ready to fight at all times. So take turns. Do you read? Over.”

“This is Five … Roger that,” Sergeant Marvin Kawecki replied. “Over.”

“This is Four … I read you Five-by-Five,” Corporal Tim Yorba echoed. “Over.”

Five minutes later all three of the Stalkers were parked as Hale opened the hatch and allowed Barrie to precede him. She was wearing trousers, and he couldn't help but notice how well they fit as she disappeared through the hatch.

Once outside, Hale was pleased to see that the civilian
had remembered to take a Bullseye assault rifle with her as she dropped onto one of the machine's massive legs and jumped to the snow-covered ground. With the exception of Hale's .44 Magnum pistol, the entire team was equipped with Chimeran weapons because, once they arrived, there wouldn't be any American ammo lying around to scavenge. And they were likely to need more than they could reasonably carry. Hale was carrying a Marksman rifle as he jumped to the ground. Though manufactured by humans, the weapon was based on Chimeran tech, and chambered to eat enemy ammo. It could fire twenty-one rounds in three-round bursts and was devastatingly accurate.

The moment they left the confines of the Stalker, they could hear the muted sounds of the distant battle as they rolled across the land. Once in position both flopped onto their stomachs and brought binoculars up to their eyes.

The ridge ran southwest to northeast, allowing a clear view of the snow-covered grasslands that lay between them and the north-south highway. A pall of gray smoke hung over the scene, but there were places where the fog was less dense, and the battlefield could be seen. It extended at least a mile to either side of the badly cratered road and was carpeted with the carcasses of burned-out M-12 Sabertooth tanks, smoking Stalkers, and the skeletal remains of Lynx APVs.

And there were bodies, too—
thousands
of them, representing both sides—which lay in drifts on the bloodied snow. Hale could read the lines of casualties the way a fortune-teller might read a palm. The northernmost line, the one that zigzagged west to east, was comprised of dead Rangers. Judging from the way they lay, like successive waves of flotsam on a beach, they had been the
first ones to make contact with a southbound tsunami of Chimera.

The stinks had literally rolled over the Rangers, in some cases stomping their vehicles under enormous feet while they rushed forward to collect what looked like a certain victory.

But as Hale panned his binoculars across the smoke-drifted battlefield, he could see the points where the freaks had been hit from both flanks. The Chimeran bodies were piled high there, where they had been forced in on themselves, and had been slaughtered in the hundreds.

Beyond the field of the dead, the survivors were preparing to continue the carnage. As Hawkins sent his reserves forward, another colossal confrontation was about to take place. American shells arced over the battlefield and threw columns of dirt and snow into the air when they exploded. Heard from a distance, the artillery fire made a low muttering sound.

A squad of gigantic bipedal Titans plodded their way south, launching fireballs as they went. The monstrous aliens seemed immune to the automatic weapons fire that sleeted their way. They were supported by Stalkers, though precious few, since dozens had been destroyed earlier.

Slightly to the rear of the widely spaced Titans, and positioned to defend them from infantry attacks, there was a company-sized force of Ravagers. Their nearly impervious energy shields had been raised to protect both themselves and the horde of Hybrids following along behind. The incoming artillery shells blew holes in their ranks, but those gaps were quickly filled as more stinks came forward.

Suddenly there were Steelheads pushing to the front of the shambling pack, their Augers at the ready, with at
least a thousand standard Hybrids close behind. Meanwhile, out along both flanks, dozens of Howlers were visible, dashing this way and that and baying like wolves.

It was a terrifying sight, and from the safety of the ridge, Hale felt a combination of thankfulness and guilt as the Rangers fought back. Tanks targeted the Titans, quickly blowing half of them into bloody hamburger, as LAARK-equipped hit teams rushed in on Lynx APVs to deal death to the Ravagers, all of which were vulnerable from behind. And Hale's fellow Sentinels were present as well, their uniforms making them distinguishable from the rest as the infantry swept forward to engage the bloodthirsty Hybrids.

Nor were the skies empty as a flight of three Sabre Jets roared in to fire rockets at the Chimeran horde and hose them with cannon fire. Their presence made a difference at first, but was quickly neutralized as two knife-winged enemy fighters appeared and immediately sent one of the American planes spiraling into the ground. The ensuing explosion produced a muted
boom
, which rolled across the prairie like thunder.

“Damn,” Hale said, lowering his binoculars. “Did you see that? The poor bastard never had a chance.”

“Yes,” Barrie replied bleakly, “and that's why we need nuclear weapons. Come on. This is our chance to slip past them.” With that she stood and moved back toward the Stalker.

He was impressed by her grim determination as he got up to follow her. Together they slip-slid down the reverse slope to the point where the vehicles were waiting. As they approached he could see Yorba and Pardo on the ground, taking the opportunity to stretch their legs, while Kawecki and Gaines were on standby inside their unit, ready to fight if necessary.