“Pickup truck?”
“Some of the locals have rendered assistance,” Weaver said. “I’d make a redneck joke but I are one. Anyway, they’ve got the monsters pushed back to the gate and we’re going to try to close it, or at least block it, with one of the bulldozers that was clearing the area. But we’ve been discussing it and we think there are probably heavier monsters that haven’t arrived yet. I think you need to get some really heavy forces down here.”
“We will,” the NSA answered. “There’s a battalion on the way from Benning at the moment but they can’t be there until tomorrow at the earliest.”
“Well, in that case I suggest that you get whatever you can get here as fast as possible,” Weaver said. “these guys seem to mean business. And so far I think we’ve only seen their equivalent of infantry. I don’t want to think about what might be on the way. I’d say, ma’am, that it’s a race to see who can…” he paused. He’d heard the term before. Oh, yeah. “who can get here the fustest with the mostest.”
There was a pause and he could almost see the NSA nod. “I see. I’ll point that out, with underlining, to the Pentagon.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Weaver said as the pickup braked to a stop by the bulldozer. “I’ve got to go now. Talk to you later. Bye.”
“You know,” Weaver said to the air. “This is almost as exciting as defending a scientific paper.”
“You’re joking,” the chief replied, climbing out of the truck and scanning for monsters. There was one of the dogs on the bulldozer and he shot it off but that seemed to be the only one in the area.
“Sort of,” Weaver said. “But you’d be surprised how brutal it can get.” He hefted the shotgun and felt in his pocket for the remaining rounds. The pistol, on safe as he’d been shown, was shoved in the front of his pants, his last magazine shoved in his back pocket. “And they don’t let you shoot people who are attacking you for no reason.”
The four of them clambered on the bulldozer and the local got it started. It lurched into motion and headed right for the gate.
“I’m gonna pull it up to the side and pivot it,” the local said. “That’s gonna be the bad time; nobody will be able to fire because we’ll be in the way.”
“Well, I’ll do what I can,” Miller said. He had grabbed the Tyrannosaur and had his M-4 slung over his back. “Sanson, take the dogs, I’ll handle the thorns, Doc, you handle anything that gets on the dozer.”
The local picked up the dozer blade as one of the thorn-throwers that had just exited the gate fired at them. Most of the thorns were caught by the blade but a few pinged onto the canopy over the driver’s seat.
Miller leaned against the support of the canopy and fired the Tyrannosaur, the recoil almost knocking him off his feet.
“Yowza!” he yelled, working the bolt and then rotating his shoulder.
“Got a kick, don’t it?” the local said.
Sanson was picking off dogs on either side and Doc realized he should be watching for threats, not watching the chief. He looked around and, sure enough, one of the dogs had managed to jump up on the back of the dozer. He gave it a mouthful of buckshot which, if it didn’t kill it, certainly knocked it off the dozer. Another was trying to get past the spinning treads on his side and he shot it in the back. It lost the use of its back legs but still tried to crawl forward.
Just then the local pivoted the dozer, incidentally crushing the wounded dog monster, and lowered the blade slightly, lining it up with the hole. There was a mound of injured and dead monsters by the gate and the dozer pushed them back into the hole along with a thorn-thrower that had just come through. The mound shrank as it was pushed back and then the dozer blades, which were wider than the opening, reached the gate. And stopped.
All four of them were thrown forward as the bulldozer lurched to a halt. The local geared down, but the treads just spun in place.
“Damn,” Miller said. “That’s weird.”
“Very,” Weaver admitted. He hadn’t been certain what would happen since the blade was wider than the opening but if he had been willing to make a guess is was that the dozer would have gone forward as if the gate didn’t exist, leaving the gate in the middle of the dozer. However, it appeared that the gate had a very real physical presence. It was, however, at least partially blocked. As he watched, though, a dog monster crawled out from under the blade, only to be shot by Sanson.
“Lower the blade a little,” the chief said.
The local lowered it to the ground, leaving the top half of the gate open. A thorn-thrower clambered over the obstacle but was hit by fire from three separate machine guns and fell back into the gate.
“Let’s dig a berm,” Sanson said. “Push dirt up to cover it completely.”
“They’d just dig through it,” Miller said. “No, leave it this way. We’ll realign the machine guns to cover it. I’m sure they’ll figure out a way through but it will do for now.”
The four of them clambered off the dozer and headed for the lines at a weary trot. They were halfway there when an explosion behind them threw them off their feet.
Weaver rolled onto his back and looked towards the gate where the smoking bulldozer still lay, half its blade blown off.
“I thought they’d think of something,” Miller said, angrily. “But not that fast!”
“Come on!” Weaver shouted, springing to his feet and hurrying back to the hole they had occupied at the first attack. Behind them there was another explosion and then another.
He jumped into the hole, realized that he’d left his shotgun behind, and started to go back for it just as the smoking bulldozer shuddered and was shoved out of the way.
What came through the hole was impossible, a beast about the size of a rhinoceros, covered in scaly plates and strong enough, apparently, to move a D-9 by shoving with six stumpy legs. It let out a high-pitched bellow that shook the ground, then turned its head and launched a ball of green lightning from between two horns. The lightning seemed to float through the air but it must have been going fast because at almost the same instant it was fired it hit the trench line and exploded, blowing one of the machine gun posts into the air.
“Holy fucking shit,” Sanson muttered, pumping rounds into the thing. Or at least at it; they were sparking on its plate and clearly not penetrating.
“Well, now we know what their tanks look like,” the chief said. He still had the Tyrannosaur and was aiming at the thing but not firing. “Come on, you bastard,” he muttered.
The monster fired another ball of lightning and one of the houses behind them exploded in fire. Then it stopped and roared again.
As it did the chief fired one round.
Weaver had thought the world had exploded when the first round had been fired by the creature but he now had a new perspective. The air turned white and he found himself flung through the air by a tremendous force like a giant, ungentle, hand. He didn’t even notice when he slammed into the back of the hole. He knew he passed out but it couldn’t have been for long because the rumble from the explosion was still resounding when he shook his head and opened his eyes. For a moment he thought he was blind but realized that it was just an afterimage of the explosion; everything looked milky-white. He felt something liquid on his face and reached up. His nose and ears were both bleeding.
Sanson was lying in the bottom of the hole, unmoving. He was breathing but out cold. The local was in the bottom next to him, his head tilted at an odd and clearly unsurvivable angle. The chief was lying next to him up against the side of the hole, and sat up with what appeared to be a groan. That was when Weaver realized that all he could hear was a ringing in his ears.