Rick Carter's First Big Adventure (Pete's Barbecue Book 1) (32 page)

      “We are here!” He had to shout above the noise of the wind and the foliage.

       Mel looked out at where the tracker was pointing, but he couldn’t see anything other than jungle.  “Are you sure?  I don’t see anything!” Even Mel’s short hair was whipping about on his head.  

     “We are at the start!  It is time to move into the streams from here!  We follow where it goes to find the break!”  Daniel explained. 

      “Okay, how do we do that?”  Mel seemed confused.  “I mean what do you normally do?”

     Daniel looked ahead again and then back to Mel. “Usually, I am with Sam!  He takes care of this part!”

      “You mean he opens a port!  Why didn’t you tell me?  We should have brought him along!”  Mel seemed agitated by this twist of events.

     “No, he could do nothing for us here!”  Daniel explained.  “I do not think he is able!  It has never been this bad before, and Sam is not usually affected by the Nexus this bad!”

      “Blast!”  Mel muttered, and he glanced down at his 9000.  For the first time, he noticed that his go light was green.  They were near an active port, but it wasn’t one created by the Company.  This port source was strong, the strongest he had ever seen.  He had taken one glance at Daniel before he decided to push the button.  The result was something else he had never seen.  The port did not form around them as it would normally.  The light did not envelope them.  Instead, the wind grew harsher, and about thirty yards in front of them a strange port began to open.  It wasn’t the normal kind of port with the unpleasant flash of blinding light and the searing pain on your retinas.  This was an opening, a void, and around it twirled a multitude of fractured pieces of reality like a broken mirror in a whirlpool, reflecting the images around them as they turned and tumbled in the force of the orbit and splitting the white light like a prism sending multiple colors in all directions.  The wind seemed to be coming from the black opening.   “What is that!?  Have you seen it like this before?”  Mel shouted, almost drowned by the torrential sound of the wind now.  The trees were starting to bend, and larger pieces of debris were in the air.

      “No!”  The Tracker quickly replied.  “Never this bad!”

      “This is troublesome,” Mel said too low to hear.  

      Daniel smiled.  “That is where we have to go!”  He picked up his rifle and braced himself against the strong wind, waiting for Mel to move ahead.

      “You’re kidding, right?!”  Mel put his hand on top of his head, but he forgot he wasn’t wearing a hat.

     Margaret’s concern grew as the wind around them began to pick up.  She noticed her husband move in a short display of pain whenever the wind increased.  She knew it wasn’t going to be much longer before they had to port out.  Roger was crying now, mumbling and holding onto the trunk of a palm tree for protection from the myriad of things that were shooting through his mind like a thousand horrible movies flashed in two-second increments all at the same time.   It was getting intolerable.  If Tor blacked out, she would lose her only means of porting out.  Action needed to be taken and soon.   She stood up, unsure what she was looking for, and braced herself against the wind with a hand on the trunk of the palm.  Just then a movement occurred around her like a ripple in the fabric of space.  It looked like someone had shaken reality like a piece of thin foil.  The image in front of them changed and seemed to compress in like space was trying to fit everything into smaller bits.  The trees changed, the land changed and then she saw Mel and Daniel standing there about 35 yards away, looking back at her just as stunned as she was looking at them.  In front of them, she noticed the multi-colored circle around a black hole center that was swirling in mid-air.   She shielded her eyes with her hand as the wind picked up two-fold.

       “What in the…?!”  She yelled out.

     Mel glanced quickly over at Boone, his expression twisted in sheer surprise, before turning back to Margaret in the distance.  He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted with all the strength of his lungs.  “It’s bending space now!”

     She couldn’t hear him and shrugged at him.

     “It’s bending space!  Get out of here!  Get Roger and Tor out of here!”  He waved at her.

     She could tell by his gestures that it was time for them to go.  She turned quickly back to her husband, prepared to get him up and ported out before it tore out his mind.  But, she found him unconscious now and unable to respond no matter how furiously she shook him.  She looked around desperately, then back to Mel and Daniel.   Now the scene in front of her had changed once more.  There seemed to be a hundred Mels and a hundred Daniels standing there together looking blankly at her.  All of the Mels tried to shout at her one more time.

      “Margaret!”  They all said at the same time, completely incomprehensible.

      She couldn’t hear them because of the loud wind being thrown out by the power of the sphere and the fact that so many Mels were all trying to talk at the same time.

      “Margaret!”  They all said again.  This time, he seemed to notice the problem and he turned to his numerous doppelgangers standing around him and shouted.  “Shut up!  I’m trying to talk!”  The other Mel’s shrugged their shoulders and flipped him off.  He turned back to Margaret and shouted to her. “Get Roger out of here!  Go back to Pete!  He’s at the Emporium!  Find Pete!  He’ll know what to do next!”

     “What!?”  Margaret shouted back.

      Mel’s shoulders fell, and he looked at her dejected.  “Are you serious?”  He said, knowing she couldn’t hear him.  He looked around at his other selves.  “Okay, how about a couple of you guys help me out here.”  Once again he tried to speak to her above the sound of the wind and the energy.  “Take Roger and get out of here!”  6 of them said together.  It was loud enough to be heard.

       “I’m trying!  Sam’s out!”  Margaret coupled her hands over her mouth to get enough volume.

       None of the Mel’s acted like they understood.  They just repeated: “Back to Pete!  Look for the Emporium in Tumon!  You’ll find him there!  You’ll be safe there!”  They shouted.

       She bristled at him realizing how ridiculous this game was becoming.  She decided to do something that she rarely ever did around other people.  It was something meant only for Tormodis.  No one else was supposed to know she could do it.  That was what they had agreed upon in the beginning.  She bent space around herself and Roger and her husband and instantly moved the three of them a mile and a half south of their previous location to the middle of an open field overlooking the calm blue ocean.   The sky overhead was bright, clear and blue and the only breeze was the one coming from the soft turquoise waters.    Margaret had a little ability of her own and had managed to keep it completely secret.    She looked down at her husband who was opening his eyes now, his pain and his distress easing.  “Time to go, Sam,” She said to him.   Roger nodded silently beside them in agreement happy that his waking nightmare was over.

       The numerous Mels watched Margaret’s disappearing act with alarm.  None of them had been expecting that.   The 6 of them that had been trying to combine their voices into one volume so they could be heard looked at each in slight shock while the other ninety or so did an inappropriate thumb’s up sign and rolled their eyes in disgust instead.  “I hate me,” Mel mumbled.

     He waved at himself while all of them at the same time stepped into the ball of energy along with the 168 Daniel Boones and then they were all gone.  The ball, the wind and Mel and Daniel disappeared in one sudden and overwhelming moment of silence like a huge door suddenly being slammed shut on all of space and reality.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

What has Eight Legs and Goes Splat?

      Dennis had managed to get 168 more people into the Emporium by the time the rampaging termites showed up.  It wasn’t like they were a surprise.  They were so slow, and they moved together in a long, bulky line, just plodding along.  They were not very hard to see even in the distance under the growing darkness and smoke.   Much earlier, before the din and chaos of a full-scale apocalyptic meltdown erupted, Dennis had noticed a large mass of them approaching from the south. They were just a huge white line that seemed to move to and fro slowly in the distance.  He could only tell what they were through his field glasses.  For the moment, the spiders had been enough to deal with.  The building’s defenses had fried some of them as they tried to assault from all directions.  But, he had extended the range of the shield out as far as he could to help and direct as many people into the defense perimeter.  If he went any further, he was going to need heavy weapons.  He was just starting to contemplate raiding the building’s armory when the radio pinned to his shirt squawked to life.  It was Pete using the old CB radio in his truck.   His voice was barely understandable given the static, the squawking, his thick accent and some weird metallic grinding noise that sounded like a machine shop in full operation.

      “Dennis, Dennis, you dere?!” Dennis heard his boss shout over the radio.

     He keyed the mic on his shirt and leaned to speak into it.  “Here, boss.  Send it.”

     “Where you been boy!?”  Pete shouted.  “I been tryin’ to get you!”

    Dennis sighed.  “Been here for a while boss.  Got everything going.  Do you need an emergency port out?”

     “Never mind dat, now!”  Pete squawked back.  “Rick and me in da truck, comin’ your way.  Plow de road for us, will you?”

  “Roger that, boss.  I’ll be on the south side.”  He replied and hurried back into the building.  He was going to need some help with what he had in mind, especially since that plan required the use of a couple of M2A .50 caliber machine guns.   In fact, he was going to need a couple of volunteers.  It should be fun.

        The termites were getting closer, and the spiders were starting to gather in mass just outside of the shield zone.  They had learned what the shield could do and were massing until they could figure out their next move.  Dennis was going to have to hurry.  He knew tactically speaking it was only a matter of time before the spiders learned to overwhelm the shield with sheer numbers.  The shield was only designed to operate against a limited assault.  It was never meant to repel infinite waves of giant bugs.  Sooner or later they were going to have to get inside and get ready for the secondary defenses to kick in.  The problem with that plan was that even the secondary defenses were not designed to last forever.  There was going to come a point when all resources were brought to bear and exhausted.  They simply could not keep it up continuously, even with the reactor.

     Pete put the mic from his old CB radio down in the seat beside him while he wrapped both thick brown hands firmly around the steering wheel.  His body rocked back and forth as he unconsciously tried to force the truck to move faster.  The tires were down to bare rims now, and they were moving along way too slow because of the heavy friction of the metal on the asphalt.  It was the bare metal of the rims that was making the high pitched squealing noise against the hot asphalt of the road.   Smoke was boiling out from the wheel wells.  It looked as though at any moment the whole truck might catch on fire from the friction.  But, Pete couldn’t afford to stop.  The closer they got to the Honey Pot the greater the number of spiders they were encountering and the greater amount of destruction they had to avoid.  Anything in his way from that point on he had decided just to ram.  It also saved on ammunition.  But, there just seemed to be no end of the spiders.  He ran over a few that were in the way simply because he could, and it was fun.  He avoided the termites, however.  The toxic industrial strength acid they spewed convinced him just to find a way around them.  This was both easy and hard.  He had no trouble avoiding them because they were so slow but when he did have to turn the lack of rubber on the wheels meant he had to force the steering wheel to move with every ounce of strength he had.  Fortunately, not many were on the road.  But, his attention to keeping the truck moving and avoiding obstacles meant he wasn’t able to keep track of things off in the distance to his right or left.  Rick, on the other hand, had plenty time and vantage to see just how bad things were along the way.  He could see a line of termites moving off along the back street, parallel with Marine Corps Boulevard, slowly moving forward.    Rick was taken aback by how much the scenery had changed since he arrived yesterday in the afternoon underneath the clear blue tropical sky.  All of the beautiful scenery he saw yesterday was now distorted and ruined and in flames, covered by black billowing smoke with parts of walls, roofs, and other debris falling into the streets.  Abandoned cars were everywhere.  Victims were everywhere. The sky above was dark, like an ominous approach of a really bad storm.  That didn’t make any sense either.  It was only a little past 10 AM.  And everywhere the bugs kept attacking.   The spiders seemed to be growing in number and intensity the closer they got to the Emporium.  The area around the Honey Pot looked like a nest or a hive.  It seemed to be the focus of their attack.  It was as if they were being controlled, manipulated to attack that one point.