“Fine. Save it for when the evacuation is complete.” The secretary paused and started grumbling to himself about “motherfucking mars men.” Then he took a long chug of what Colon could only guess was hard liquor and continued. “These so-called aliens haven’t attempted to communicate have they?”
“Not that we can tell, sir. They might have possessed a child. The police are attempting to locate her, but she doesn’t speak.”
“A lot of good that’ll do then. Let’s give them a message: ‘I don’t care whether you’re aliens from another country or another planet. You can’t plop down on American soil and take whatever the hell you want.’ Nail them with bunker busters until that thing cracks. Deploy your forces along the lagoon and pulverize anything that comes out.”
The secretary opted for the old beehive approach-whack it until the angry bees swarm at you and then blast them with pesticide. Colon figured that the beings who built those mini cyborgs and the seemingly impenetrable barrier were smarter than insects, but challenging an order from Stronge would accomplish nothing besides wasting valuable time.
After Colon agreed, Stronge promised him that backup to secure the base would arrive within hours. He disconnected the line, leaving Colon and his men alone against an alien force. His men had been trained well. They had prepared for battle against military, guerilla and terrorist forces in virtually all terrains on earth. But they hadn’t encountered anything like this.
“I wish I had the luxury of waiting on the arrival of a few thousand more troops,” Colon said to himself. He gazed out his window at the solid yellow bubble. “Lord knows what they have waiting for us inside there.”
The pellets smashed through a bullet proof window that Colon had counted on as a shield. He took cover under his desk. The shards of glass fanned out through the control room, and strange projectiles bounced around like ping pong balls. He hadn’t seen what shot them. Colon had only heard his men on the front lines say, “What the fuck is that? Fire!”
The bunker busters had been as ineffective as the other air strike, but they drew the bees out of the hive just as the secretary wanted. Stronge had assumed the soldiers would shoot the possessed animals to bits. Colon heard plenty of shooting outside his window. More of it sounded like the “thrap” of giant blowguns than gunfire.
Colon scampered underneath the window, and poked his head up for a quick view of the situation. Thrap. Thrap. He ducked back down as a figure crashed through his window, and slammed across Colon’s back on its way down. Shrugging off the throbbing bone bruise on his ribs, he slid across the floor, and drew his revolver on his attacker. He saw the blue eyes, and blood-soaked brown hair of one of his sergeants. The soldier slumped against the wall with his leg bent underneath him at a grotesque angle. Turning his gun on the window, Colon aimed into the gunpowder-laden breeze.
“What’s going on out there, soldier?” Colon asked. “No one’s responding to my calls.”
“There aren’t many of us left, sir.” The soldier grunted as he twisted his deadweight leg into what would have been a normal position, if his knee and calf hadn’t been carved in half. “They hit us hard, and fast. Get the civilians out of here. Please, my children…”
Colon grabbed a pack of bandages to wrap the soldier’s wound. By the time he returned, the man had gone cold, and his pulse had stilled. He couldn’t have bled out that quickly. The marks on his head were scraps from the glass. Colon put gloves on, and scoured his wounded leg for the bullet. He pulled out a grape-sized wad of smooth, solid bone. It dripped a syrupy purple liquid-the color of the infected tumors.
“Biological warfare,” Colon said, as he tossed the alien projectile out the window. He removed his purple-stained gloves. Even with a battle raging around him, he hit the bathroom, and washed his hands. When he convinced himself that he didn’t have alien cyborgs swimming in his bloodstream, he got on his radio.
“This is your commanding officer. Everyone fall back to the airfield. Protect the civilians at all costs.”
Secretary Stronge probably would have demanded that he defend the air base first, but Colon didn’t have time to call him and check. He couldn’t bear the responsibility for more civilian deaths, especially after he had invited the people on base, and then picked a fight with their hostile neighbors. He should have told the secretary that his plan would end in disaster. Colon knew he could have done so many things differently. Those were his bombs that had blown up those bridges, and he’d done nothing besides make pointed phone calls, and place a few lackadaisical watchmen on leave while an invading force massed outside his window for weeks.
He couldn’t hold anything back now. If he did, no human would leave his base with a head on their shoulders.
Colon dashed across the parking lot towards a jeep. Jerking his head over his shoulder, he saw who had been firing on the command center. From a distance, it seemed almost human, but the only truly human parts it had were its legs and waist. The mutant had an oversized snake’s head stuffed into a black turtle shell larger than a human torso. Its purple eyes gleamed at him like the laser sights on sniper rifles. Those were its only remotely biological parts. It had two jerky mechanical arms, one with a boat propeller and one with a gardening spade on the end. A double-barreled gun protruded from the middle of its shell. It must use its own infected bones for ammo, Colon thought. He never imagined that microscopic machines could manufacture something out of woodland creatures, and spare parts capable of overpowering America’s finest.
“Run, sir!” shouted a soldier from behind a tree on the edge of the parking lot. Despite the man’s lower rank, Colon followed his advice and scampered for the jeep. He saw the soldier pump out several rounds that bounced off the mutant’s shell. The creature returned fire with a bone fragment that ripped through the tree as if it were an armor-piercing bullet. Luckily, it missed the soldier, who felled the mutant with a clear shot to its snake head.
“Come on in,” Colon shouted to the solder as the brigadier general hopped into the jeep.
When he didn’t hear a response, he looked to where the man had been standing. Colon gawked at the sight of a beast that had been spliced together from a horse and a gator. Snarling at him, it clenched the writhing torso of the soldier in its massive jaws. Blood spurted from the holes its teeth tore into his flesh and cascaded down the creature’s neck.
Colon floored it. He ignored the road and rumbled over the grass towards the airfield. Two projectiles punctured the rear door of the jeep. He glanced in his rearview mirror and saw two of the shelled mutants speed-walking after him with their knees locked so they didn’t tip over. Over near the lagoon, he spotted four more marching through the bomb-proof barrier as if it were nothing but a curtain.
When Colon reached the airfield, he found a couple hundred soldiers waiting for him-a fraction of Patrick’s original strength. They formed a shield in front of the civilians, who lay flat on their bellies. That wouldn’t save them if the second line of defense faired as poorly as the first line had, Colon thought. And the formation prevented them from boarding the helicopters. No one would survive unless they made a stand.
His wife and son were in that terrified mass somewhere. There were so many manes of silky black hair and boys with buzz cuts that he couldn’t tell his family apart. He nearly shouted their names, but he bit his tongue before acting so selfishly. Each life on that airfield was the most important thing in the world to somebody. Some of those family members had already lost their loved ones to the horde, and were yet to find out.
A captain saluted Colon when he stepped down from his jeep. Before he could issue a single order, the eyes of every human on base were drawn to the west side of the airfield. The aliens had deployed their army. They reminded Colon of the blocks he gave to his son that had one-third of an animal drawn on each them and could be mixed and matched to form the actual animals or fantasy creatures. In this case, everything had been scrambled. They armored themselves in reptilian scales, fur, metal, and ghastly pale skin. They wielded claws, long teeth, and junkyard scraps converted into shanks. The only feature they all shared was the ravenous purple eyes. Although their heads pointed as straight as sentinels, Colon felt that every single pair of those thousand eyes gazed upon him. They were outnumbered worse than two-to-one against an enemy that had a seemingly endless supply of backup a few hundred feet away.