Rick Carter's First Big Adventure (Pete's Barbecue Book 1) (33 page)

       The old truck ground and rattled its way slowly along the road way until the first few buildings of Tumon were starting to come into view.  This was the beginning of the tourist district and as such it meant more destruction and more casualties.  The various smaller buildings and houses just before Tumon were all set ablaze and people could be heard screaming amid the sound of gunfire.   He found himself hoping and praying that people were making it to safety, but he knew, in the back of his mind countless lives were being lost.  As he raced on, Rick began coughing heavily in the back from the smoke that the rims were generating.  But, it wasn’t enough to shield him from seeing the large pools of blood in the road, and the unknown pieces of flesh scattered amid broken palms, broken sidewalks and torn up asphalt.  Some of the pools of blood showed drag marks where someone had been attacked then pulled away to a safe corner where a spider could eat in peace.  Pete kept his concentration on the road.  Only time would tell how many casualties there would be. 

      A few hundred yards away from the Honey Pot, Pete could see clearly now how many spiders were massed around his building.  He quickly realized that their entrance was completely blocked and with the truck moving so slow they would be easy pickings when the spiders caught wind of them and attacked.   He brought the old truck to a slow stop.  The spiders were ignoring them, concentrating their efforts instead on the Honey Pot’s shielding, like they were drawn to it.   The spiders were all over the base of the building, around it in heaps of twisting legs and heaving bodies.  They were swarming the building.  That was clear.  It was like moths to a giant bug light.  Something was drawing them in.  Maybe it was the field harmonics.  Maybe the frequency of the shield was acting like a giant bug light.  He guessed there were probably about 4 or 500 of them surrounding the building.  He continued to sit there and wait and hope they weren’t seen.  Rick kept silent in the back, his gun aimed, finger on the trigger and wondering why they had stopped, especially so close to so many spiders.  Finally over the vast barrage of sounds and echoes they heard the distinct sound of heavy caliber automatic gunfire.  They watched as the spiders to their right started to peal backward, like something really big was punching them hard.  Pieces of spider were flying everywhere.  Pete smiled.

     He picked up the mic again and keyed it.  “Dennis, we comin’ tru.  Get ready!” He didn’t wait for a reply.  It’s now or never.  He threw the mic down into the floor board and reached down to pop an eight-track cassette into his truck’s antiquated stereo. It was his favorite Elvis tape.   The King immediately started belting out in heavy static over old and distressed truck speakers.  Perfect, he thought.  He threw the clutch into gear and with metal wheels grinding he jolted forward toward the sound of a Ma Deuce hammering at the spiders, and what he hoped was safety.

    When Rick heard the music start blaring out from the cab, he looked ahead with a sudden burst of adrenaline in his veins.  He had a surprising and ridiculous vision of army Hueys landing in a rice paddy among shelling and gun fire in Vietnam.  He fired his rifle off to his right, careful to hit a spider and not the defenders of the Emporium. 

    Dennis gently and methodically grabbed the cold side handles of the M2 and placed his thumbs on the firing plate in between.  A slow menacing smile crept across his face as he let his thumbs ever so slightly press down on the firing plate.  Finally, he heard that click felt that firing pin release and then joyfully received the full effect of the first round exploding out of the muzzle.  He wanted to laugh as more of them followed, and he aimed the muzzle of the big .50 at the mass of spiders in front of him.   He had two of Pete’s younger cousins with him, helping him feed the belt of ammo and keeping an eye on the flanks.  He settled on only one big machine gun because of the pressing time.  They had agreed to help him carry the big machine gun out of the Pot and set it up just on the edge of the shield.  In exchange, he loaded them down with lots of artillery for them to shoot and web belts with an assortment of all sorts of dangerous toys.  He needed them to keep an eye out while he concentrated on opening up a hole for Pete to get through.  Both boys, mere teenagers, had never had this many weapons before.  Each boy held M4s in both hands; Colt 45s shoved in their belts, and tactical web gear with enough snap pouches to hold three weeks of ammo plus an assortment of other things like grenades and flares.  The gear was heavy but each boy proudly wore it and proudly blasted the innards out of everything that moved in front of them with growing smiles.  The spiders couldn’t get to them, but they could get to the spiders.  It was a video game in real life.   While Dennis pounded away with the Ma Deuce, they watched on each side of him and fired their twin M4s.  Between the three of them, they laid a very effective covering fire.    Dennis, at one point, could hear his microphone come to life and Pete’s voice shouting something to him.  But, he was too busy to respond.  There were too many things needing killing.  Man!  He thought.  How I have missed this.

    The truck came at a ridiculously slow speed, but it rammed into the spiders that were left in front of it.  Several loud thuds and whomps were followed by spiders flopping backward or squealing in terror from broken limbs.  He drove the truck right through them and underneath the shielded area near Dennis and his covering fire.    Dennis kept up his barrage while Pete gathered his AR and got out quickly.  Rick fumbled with the heavy gun, but he had no trouble getting out of the smoldering truck and down on the ground where he could follow Pete. 

      “Okay, brudda!”  He shouted to Dennis above the din of loud noises.  His two cousins had stopped firing already and were standing around him with big grins on their faces looking for approval on their recent handiwork.  “What you two looking at?”  He said, in playful banter.

      They took his rebuke in stride, too pleased with their recent fun to let the old man get to them.  Besides, everyone in the family was used to Pete’s bark.  He usually meant nothing by it.   Dennis stopped firing the machine gun.  He was getting ready to make a run for it, and he needed their help to get the gun and tripod back in.  “Pete!”  He shouted as he cleared the breach and slammed the housing back into place.  “We’ve got hundreds on all sides of the perimeter.  The shields have been weeding the lawn for an hour already, but I think it’s time to start mowing. I don’t know how much we’ve got left.”

       Pete looked around at the devastation around him.   Even without the guns firing the noise made by the sheer number of spiders was almost deafening.  The hole Dennis had created was already closing back in.  Were it not for the shield they would have already been overrun.  “Are the plasmas on line yet?”  He shouted.

       “No!  I was holding power in reserve for that.   You know we don’t have much time with those!”  Dennis put one hand over his mouth so he could be heard. At that moment the radio clipped to his lapel came to life. He turned the volume up loud enough to hear the transmission.  It immediately caught Pete’s attention. Rick was still standing too far away to hear it.

      “Pete!”  There came the disembodied but familiar voice of someone in a panic.  “Pete!  You out there!?  Pete!”

       Pete reached over and grabbed the mic.  “Dis is Pete.”  He simply said.

       “Pete!  Thank God.  This is Sanchez, bro, over at the gas station.  We in trouble, bro.  We in real trouble.  Can you help us?”  The voice pleaded.

       Sanchez Reyes was Pete’s third cousin on his father’s side.  He operated a Shell station three blocks further north from them.  He was also one of the few relatives that knew Pete’s CB frequency.  He knew that the Honey Pot was the only chance for his family to survive but if he was still at the gas station that meant his escape route must have been cut off.   “What you got, cuz?”  He asked.

       “Dem spiders.  They’s too many of ‘em.”  There were sounds of gunfire in the background and people shouting.  “You got to hurry.  We getting low on ammo.”

       Pete quickly replied. “Hold on cuz.  I’m comin’.”  He handed the microphone back to Dennis and turned quickly toward his truck again.  But, the old truck had finally lost its battle with physics.  The heavy friction from the driving caused it to finally catch on fire.  The fire was slowly starting to engulf the front end.  Rick jumped back from the growing red blaze.

      “Whoa!”  He shouted.

      Pete grabbed his younger cousins as they were starting to make a run for the Honey Pot with the .50 caliber between them.  “Wait.  Gimme dat gear, boys!”  He shouted.  “Rick come here!  Get dis gear.  We got another mission, eh?!”

       Rick was caught by surprise.  “What are you talking about!?”

       Pete didn’t wait.  He leaned closer toward Dennis, so he could be well understood.  “Get inside.  I gonna get dis gear.  You use the DS9 to grab us, and sling shot us over to da station.  Can you do that, brudda?”  He asked.

        Dennis nodded.  “I’ll make it happen.”  He replied.

        “Hurry!  We don’t got much time!”  He said. 

        Rick looked around perplexed. “What are we doing Pete?”

       “We gonna rescue the lost, bra.  I just volunteered you.”  He said, and he started gathering the gear that the two young teenagers were rapidly shedding, handing them Barrett in exchange.  “Here, drop dat Barrett and gear up!”

     The output power levels were located immediately to Dennis’s right as he ran into the control room.  He quickly took note of the levels, confident they had the power to generate a remote port.   The heavy guns on the roof were on standby.  He pressed the red button and put them on auto-tracking.  Milliseconds later the gun turrets had arachnid targets and were spouting a wall of lead at them.  They would track and fire until they ran out of ammunition.  The sound of that large automatic fire began to rock the glass and concrete structure.   The gun turrets were the second line of defense, along with the rockets.  He glanced over at the missile banks which were fully ready but unengaged.  The third and last stage of defense was the big plasma guns that used too much power.   They remained untapped, for now.  He looked momentarily over at the video feeds on the wall of small monitors next to the weapons control.  They were from various cameras around the island, individually powered and circuited.  Anderson Air Force Base, north of Tumon, was being overrun, despite the efforts of the U.S. Air Force.  There were simply too many creatures attacking at one time.   He instinctively knew, from years of military training, that the Honey Pot was in danger of the same fate.  For every spider that was killed, four more popped up.  And the termites were attacking the buildings all around, decimating the concrete structures in minutes.  He could see how the spiders were massing around the outer perimeter.  They were waiting as if they knew that sheer numbers would win them the day.   A quick glance at the ammo bunker showed 85% remaining.  Time was not on their side.  It was quickly becoming a war of attrition, and the spiders had the numbers in their favor.  He pressed the button for the missiles, and soon the whoosh of multiple small yield explosive tipped missiles went shooting up and then down into the mass of movement.

      The heavy guns overhead opened up in a thunderous sound of rapid fire.  The reverberating rhythm caught Rick entirely by surprise, and he jumped from the shock.  He was still standing by Pete, who was trying to get one of the plastic latches clipped on his H harness.  Rick was already equipped and ready for some serious shooting.  He had his H harness on, and it was expanded to its full size to fit his chest.  In his hands, he was holding two M4s with double banana magazines taped end to end in each.  He had two pistols on each hip, pouches of ammo and, for the first time, some grenades.  A large knife hung from the web belt.  He felt powerful.  He felt tactical.  He felt like a reject from a bad 80’s action film.

      Pete had clipped Dennis’s radio to his shirt so he could keep radio contact after they ported.  But the port in and out wasn’t the problem.  He was more concerned about getting everyone at the location safely back out.  He didn’t know how many there were.  Remote port in and outs had limits on numbers, especially when power consumption was so crucial.  He wasn’t sure how much the Pot could take.  He looked at Rick, who was staring nervously overhead at the guns firing from the roof.   Talking was now out of the question.  The noise was so loud that he could only hear the continuous fire.  Then the rockets started.  Out came the whoosh and the bright glare of a rocket shot out in the mass of spiders and the termites.  Half a second, later an explosion followed and they were bathed in the intense orange glow of high yield explosives detonating a couple of hundred yards in front of them.  With each explosion the light, revealed the enormity of the threat they were under.  The black smoke overhead from the numerous fires, combined with the unnatural dimming light, had produced an eerie, otherworldly atmosphere around them.  It felt like being on the edge of Dante’s Inferno.  They were nearly in complete darkness now.  The high beam lights, shining from the roof of the building, only played out a few hundred feet in certain directions.  They were sweeping back and forth across the perimeter and could only reveal so much of the enemy.   The light from the rockets offered them a better glimpse further out, if only for a few seconds.  The entire area was filled now with one huge mass of moving black and white bodies.  They were being swarmed.  The only thing that was keeping them back was the fact that their bodies were so large they couldn’t get over each other fast enough to truly overwhelm the facility.  And the defenses from the Pot kept them wild and confused.   He wanted to say something to Rick but knew it was pointless.  Baptism by fire was going to be the rule of the day.  From Tampa taxi driver to field agent in Guam during a full invasion in just two days.  Maybe that transition wasn’t as difficult as he supposed.  He had been to Tampa back in the old days.  This wasn’t that different from a Friday night after a ball game.  He hefted the two guns he had in his hands as the bright light of a port began to form around them.  “It’s go time, bra.”