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Carolyn looked out the window as the last fiery rim of the sun sank below the horizon, and a chill snaked up her spine. It was a hunch at best, but she suddenly knew what might have caused this. And if she was right…

The glass windowpanes in the airport terminal started to vibrate, ever so slightly. From outside, there was a muted clicking sound, a strange chattering noise. Coming from the southeast. From the city. Even inside the terminal, it could be heard.

She could feel it.

The darkness had come.

Like millions of bats pouring out of an underground cavern to rule the night, they came.

THE SECOND NIGHT

CHAPTER 13

“Movement! We have movement! Pilot! Target target target!”

As the AC-130 slowly circled above the darkened city, its infrared night-vision targeting sensors suddenly lit up with hundreds — no, thousands — of targets, each glowing with demonic intensity, moving fast from hundreds of different locations, all at the same instant.

The pilot had been intently watching the oil pressure on engine three, and the call from his infrared detection set operator had startled him. “Say again?”

“Jesus Christ! They’re all over the place!”

He definitely heard him that time. The pilot dipped the wing of his gunship and looked through his targeting sight to his left. What he saw chilled him. “Holy mother of God.”

The ground below him was alive with the bright green infrared signatures of thousands of small targets flowing outward from the darkened buildings slowly rotating clockwise below his orbiting gunship. It was an almost liquid wave of targets, each abandoned building erupting like a miniature volcano spilling bright green lava out of every crack, flowing fast toward the troops on the ground.

The combat-proven gunships were designed to deliver truly fearsome firepower. They carried a single 105mm M102 howitzer, capable of firing anywhere from six to ten rounds per minute, an L60 Bofors 40mm cannon capable of delivering either single precision shots or a hellish volley of 120 rounds per minute, and a GAU-12 25mm Gatling gun capable of spitting out 1,800 rounds per minute. During the last ten years of conflict, the deadly AC-130s had drawn enemy blood hundreds of times. The misguided mullahs hated seeing these things circling their safe little caves. It was usually the last thing they saw before they were cut to pieces by a hail of good old American steel. The AC-130s could deliver surgical firepower or, if the situation called for it, area saturation. In layman’s terms, that meant Fuck it. Kill everything.

This was one of those situations.

“Call ’em!” the pilot screamed into his headset, ordering the radio operator to inform the ground units that his aircraft was about to engage. “Spooky’s going hot!” All right, you little bastards, let’s party.

At the same instant the ground troops received the frantic warning call from the gunship’s radio operator, the AC-130’s 25mm Gatling gun belched a long tongue of flame toward the ground below. The WRAAAAAAAAHH from the screaming minigun could be heard from inside the cockpit, even over the gunship’s four thundering Allison turboprops. The rate of fire was so intense that the hundreds of white-hot shells etched a blinding line through the air from the gun’s spinning barrels directly to the ground below. The flaming laser beam of 25mm shells danced across the ground like a death wand wielded by an evil god, an aerial meat grinder shredding everything it touched.

Hundreds of the creatures vaporized in clouds of blood and gore, but hundreds more took their place. Moving fast.

The 40mm Bofors started pumping out rounds as well, each a glowing streak of death screaming down from the orbiting gunship and impacting the ground with a shower of sparks. Bam bam bam bam bam—the 40mm shells slid rapidly through the feeder as the weapon hammered away. The smell of burning cordite filled the inner spaces of the gunship.

A shudder shook the plane as the mighty 105mm Howitzer fired, sending high-explosive anti-personnel shells toward the swarm of targets, shredding hundreds with each powerful explosion. Kra-BAM! A six-second delay. Kra-BAM!

The gunship was firing fast and furious.

But still, the things came.

Unstoppable.

To the east and west of their position, two other orbiting gunships opened up on different parts of the city. The night sky suddenly brightened with the fury of the gunships’ coordinated wrath. The abandoned city was bathed in an unnatural, hellish glow.

The pilot watched as the wave of targets sped outward, still spilling by the thousands from the darkened buildings, from the sewers, from the hiding places. He knew his crew was killing them by the hundreds, but still they came. There were too many of the goddamned things!

He saw tracer fire below to the south of his position.

The ground troops had made contact.

He swallowed. Hard.

CHAPTER 14

Captain Pfortmiller’s soldiers had been sitting atop their line-abreast formation of Bradleys, waiting for the order to saddle up and move into the city, when the strange clicking noise, the earsplitting chattering, shattered the dead-quiet countryside like a rolling thunderclap.

“What in the holy hell is that?” Pfortmiller asked no one in particular.

The command net erupted all at once. The radioman, Specialist Gorhau, cupped one earphone with his hand, pressing it against his ear. “Cap, there’s movement in the city…”

The WRAAAAAAAAHH of the AC-130’s Gatling gun could barely be heard over the muffled thunder of thousands of clawed, muscular legs tearing across the paved streets, concrete walkways, and grassy areas of the city. The ground was vibrating. Through the vehicle’s steel tracks. Through the ceramic armor. Through the hard rubber soles of their combat boots. Like a mild electric shock.

“Jesus, there goes the gunship,” Pfortmiller said. “What the hell are they shooting at?”

The orderly chatter across the command net was suddenly replaced by frantic calls of contact by the forward units, from the east, from the west. Calls for fire support. And then, screams.

Pfortmiller sat atop his Bradley fighting vehicle, watching the fire rain down from the gunships, listening to the unnerving chattering sound coming from the city in front of him and the electronic disarray on the radio net. Whatever was happening, it was happening way too damned fast. They were supposed to move into the city in less than twenty minutes. So much for that plan, he thought.

He could hear the sound of automatic weapons fire, forward from their position. Tracers arced low across the sky, bright streaks across his night vision goggles’ field of view. “Here they come! Positions! Now now now!” he yelled, trying desperately to be heard. His troopers reacted instantly, racing to whatever fighting positions they could find.

He tried to break through on the command net: “Empire, this is Saginaw. Empire, this is Saginaw! We have contact to our front! Please advise, over!” Nothing. The net was a complete jumble of uncoordinated, unintelligible radio calls. Except for the screaming. He’d been in combat before, but it was never like this.

The chattering was incredibly loud, getting closer.

He watched as tracers from the forward firing positions suddenly ceased. One by one, they went silent.

We’re getting overrun. The realization made his blood run cold.