Jim got in and put the truck in gear, slowly rolling it forward as the infantry on either side kept pace. Twice he stopped as more waves of the monsters came out, one time ducking down as a line of something like thorns stitched the truck. They were tough and hard, though, he noticed, prodding at one that was shoved through the driver’s side door. Sharp, too. He pricked a finger and hoped like hell they weren’t poisoned.
Finally they made it up to the house and Bob called a halt. They’d left two bodies behind, both of them from getting hit by the thorn-throwers. As they pulled to a halt in the driveway the Lake County SWAT team came barrel assing out of the house and guardsmen started filtering out from other houses in the area.
“Glad you could make it,” VanGelder said.
“Where’s this gate?” Bob answered, sliding off the side of the pickup, then taking the 20mm that was handed down to him. The weapon was nearly two meters long and weighed right at fifty pounds, so it wasn’t like you could fire it off-hand. But he slung it over one shoulder and grabbed a box of ammunition for it.
“Behind the house,” the SWAT lieutenant replied. “The backyard is crawling with these things.”
“I’ll get up in the house and cover the advance,” the gunshop owner said.
“Right,” VanGelder nodded. “Get the thorn-throwers, we’ll handle the dogs.”
“Our cavalry is a group of rednecks in pickup trucks,” Sanson said, dryly.
“Don’t knock it,” the command master chief said, spitting on the floor. “That’s more firepower than I’ve seen outside Ashkanistan.”
More of the locals had moved into the downstairs and a big man carrying an absolutely huge gun shouldered past Weaver into a back bedroom. Another of the locals wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt was following him carrying three large boxes of ammunition. More flooded up carrying a motley assortment of only very large guns. The last was carrying the largest “normal” rifle Weaver had ever seen. It had a bolt action and looked like what his friends back home used for deer hunting, but it was about twice as large.
“What’s that?” he asked Miller.
“Is that what I think it is?” the chief said to the local at the same time.
“If you think it’s a Tyrannosaur, it is,” the local said, smiling.
“Damn,” the SEAL muttered. “I’ve got to move to Central Florida. They’re death on those things in Virginia.”
Firing had started up again from the back of the house and rose to a crescendo that was unbelievably loud. There was an occasional scream but the progress of the attack seemed to be steady. He could hear the firing from downstairs moving forward and thought about the gate. They couldn’t stop the things by just shooting at them; they had to close the gate somehow.
“We gotta close the gate,” Miller said, looking at him as if reading his mind.
“I don’t know how to turn it off,” Weaver said. “But what if we took one of the bulldozers and parked it in front of it? At the very least it would give us some warning that they’re coming through.”
“Well, I don’t know how to drive a bulldozer,” the command master chief admitted, sounding ashamed. “Do you?”
“No,” Weaver said. “But I bet one of these locals will.”
Sanson came back a moment later with the guy who carrying the big “Tyrannosaur” rifle.
“We want to block the gate with a bulldozer,” Weaver said.
“So he told me,” the local replied. “Makes sense. Where’s the dozer?”
“There was one over to the left,” the physicist noted. “But it’s more or less behind the gate. I don’t know if the monsters have spread that way or not.”
“They seem to be heading for the houses,” Miller pointed out. “They don’t seem to be going behind the gate at all, yet.”
“We could drive around back,” the local said. “Try to drive right up to it.”
“That might attract their attention,” the chief pointed out. “So far we have a one-axis threat. That would make it multi-axis. And that would really suck.”
“Hey, you’re a SEAL, right?” the local replied, chuckling through his beard. “You wanna live forever?”
“Preferably,” Miller answered. “But let’s go see if you know what you’re doing.”
By the time they got to the pickup truck the locals and what was left of the National Guard company had retaken the fighting positions and, with the support of heavy weapons in the houses overlooking the gate, were holding the monsters in a small perimeter right at the gate itself. The monsters were still attempting to pour through but the additional firepower of the locals had them pinned at the entrance. As they crowded into the front seat of the pickup Weaver noticed some things that looked like the alien “mosquitoes” hovering near the gate now. He dreaded those more than the thorn-throwers or the “dogs” but it turned out that these were not the semiparasitic mosquitoes. What they were became apparent as a television helicopter drifted too close to the battle.
One of the things flapped its wings harder and began to ascend. When it got to about ten meters above the ground the wings dropped off and a jet of fire shot out of its rear. It accelerated fast on what appeared to be a rocket engine and then slammed into the helicopter. The helicopter exploded in midair sending flaming pieces far and wide.
“Jesus,” the local said, putting the pickup in gear and backing out of the driveway.
“Great,” the chief said. “They’ve got antiair capability. What next? Antitank? Organic tanks?”
“That room you were in,” Weaver said. “It looked like a giant organism, right? So it’s conceivable that they could grow something as large as a tank.”
“That won’t be good,” Miller noted.
“No,” Weaver said with a chuckle.
“Where are they, then?” Sanson asked.
“Probably the same place ours are,” Weaver replied in a distracted tone. “Not near the gate. Okay, they form a gate. And maybe they’re getting ready for an invasion. But that room was more or less empty, right?”
“Right,” Miller replied.
“So… the mosquito thing that got your SEAL was something like a sentry, maybe an antibody. It was designed just to defend the hole and maybe send out an alarm. Although I’d guess getting a couple of satchel charges in the gut probably sent enough of an alarm through that thing anyway.”
“Ouch,” Miller said. “You’re saying we caused this?”
“No,” Weaver replied. “But you might have sped up their timetable. So they’re throwing everything they have nearby into the gate. And, presumably, their real heavies aren’t right there. Or, maybe, they haven’t even produced them yet but will soon. Or are producing them now and they’ll be here momentarily.”
“We’d better block the gate pretty quick, then,” the local noted, putting the truck in gear.
“Oh, yeah,” Weaver said as his phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and turned it on distractedly. “William Weaver.”
“Doctor Weaver, this is the NSA. SOCOM reports they’ve lost contact with their SEAL team, the National Guard is out of contact with their company and the last news chopper to get into the area was shot down by something. I presume you’ve moved out of the area? I wasn’t sure if you’d be there to answer, frankly.”
“No, I’m still in the area,” Weaver replied as the pickup took a corner on two wheels. “We’re going to try to block the gate with a bulldozer. And I don’t know what happened to Lieutenant Glasser but the last two members of the team are with me in the pickup truck.”