If he’d had more time, he could’ve gotten his troops back inside their Bradleys, but he knew it was too late. As he slid inside the armored troop carrier and started to pull the upper hatch closed, he saw them. Thousands of pairs of pinpoint lights — glowing eyes — racing toward his position. The ground was covered with them.
He slammed the hatch closed and screamed his orders into his helmet microphone: “Saginaw, fire at will! Fire at will! Fire at will!” He knew with a sickening certainty that there were no friendlies remaining to their front. Their field of fire was clear.
He ripped off his night-vision goggles and peered through his infrared viewer. They were less than fifty yards away, tiny yellow orbs glowing like the eyes of the devil himself. Running among the horde were other things, on two legs, leaping like gazelles with each step. He’d never seen a real monster before.
The Bradley’s gunner opened up with his 25mm Bushmaster cannon, the loud bam bam bam bam bam bam of the rapid-fire gun shaking the interior of the armored vehicle. Pfortmiller’s viewer flashed as hundreds of bright tracer rounds slammed into the onrushing wave of things. His troops were firing.
He watched helplessly as the rampaging horde slammed into his position. His troops fell where they stood, covered by the squirming mass, pieces of their bodies torn and thrown into the air by the monstrous frenzy.
He could hear the muffled thunder as they covered his Bradley and feel the vibration as they ran past his position.
The things were still coming, filling his viewer’s field of view.
Captain Pfortmiller knew he was a dead man.
With a terrible screeching noise, the upper hatch of the Bradley was ripped off its hinges, the steel wrenching and splitting as it was torn free.
Pfortmiller looked up into the face of evil. Two yellow eyes buried in the face of something that just couldn’t be real burned bright as they stared back at him. Rows of black, razor-sharp teeth filled its grinning mouth.
A long, clawed hand gripped him by the top of the head, his skull cracking loudly as the powerful claws found purchase. It wrenched his body out of the Bradley with a single pull and threw it to the ground. It was eaten in a matter of seconds by an undulating black mass of claws and teeth.
Next came the gunner.
And then the rest of the crew.
The thing standing atop the empty Bradley licked its bloody claws with a long, leathery tongue, savoring every drop. A low moaning escaped its lungs. It leapt to the ground, running toward the others, covering large distances with each long stride. Moving fast.
It could smell them.
CHAPTER 15
Transfixed by the strange vibration of the terminal windows, Carolyn suddenly noticed that the activity outside had intensified — people were running around the tarmac like ants whose hill had been kicked by a mischievous kid.
One of her team members leaned close and asked, “Carolyn, what do you think is going on?”
“I don’t know, Matt.” But she did. They could all see the bright flashes of fire streaking to the ground from the gunships in the distance. Her team had all heard the president’s speech. They knew what the gunships were firing at, but none of them wanted to acknowledge it.
A door opened twenty yards down the concourse, allowing the outside sounds to enter, and an armed trooper ran inside, turning toward their position. The shrill clicking and chattering was deafening. It abruptly ceased as the door slammed shut.
“Ms. Ridenour?”
Carolyn stepped forward. “I’m Ms. Ridenour.”
“Ma’am, you and your team have to follow me.”
“What’s going on, Sergeant?” Carolyn’s throat suddenly felt tight, constricted, as adrenaline pumped into her bloodstream. She could see a twinge of fear in the sergeant’s eyes.
“You’re being air-evaced out of here.” He quickly glanced at the tarmac, and then back to Carolyn. It was going to be close.
“Why?” Carolyn asked, surprised at how shaky her own voice was. “What’s happening? What is that noise?”
In no mood for further questions, the sergeant spoke clearly and forcefully, like a father telling his daughter to quit playing in the road because there’s a car coming. “Ma’am, you need to get out of here. You need to follow me now.”
Carolyn and her team turned toward their gear, which was neatly stacked ten feet away.
“The gear stays. Y’all don’t have a whole lot of time.” The sergeant, tired of explaining himself, turned and headed back toward the tarmac door at a slow run.
“Jesus, Carolyn,” Matt said. His eyes were wide with fright.
“I know, I know.” Carolyn was scared too, but this was her team, and it was time to be the team leader and take charge. “All right, people, you heard him. Let’s go! Quickly, before our ride leaves without us.”
Carolyn and her team ran after the sergeant, who’d already propped open the door and was waving them through. The unnatural sound was even louder now, and Carolyn knew whatever was making it was getting closer.
As she stepped through the door, automatic weapons fire rattled from the far southern edge of the airport. She could see the tracer fire. The air smelled hot, electric. For a second, one of her team members stopped on the metal stairway, frozen stiff by what he was seeing. The sergeant grabbed him by the jacket and literally dragged him down the stairs, sending him sprawling onto the tarmac.
The sergeant screamed to be heard. “Follow me!” He pointed to a helicopter in the distance, its dual rotor blades beginning to rotate.
There was more weapons fire. From the eastern part of the airport. Closer than from the south.
Good God, they’re all around us! Carolyn realized. Her stomach sank. She’d never been so scared in her entire life. It was happening too fast! They were nearly forty miles from the center of the exclusion zone, ten miles from the edge of where the things had stopped at daybreak — how could the things have moved so far, so fast? Her heart was beating so hard she felt as if it would burst from her chest and go bouncing toward the helicopter without her.
As she ran toward the chopper, she saw them. Small yellow dots shining in the dark just beyond the hail of tracer rounds, which were now flying from the entire southeastern edge of the airport. The sight was indescribable — there were thousands of them! The huge rodents the president had spoken of… They were real. God in heaven, they were real!
The sound of weapons fire was nearly continuous. She’d never been a soldier, and had never been anywhere close to a war zone. She found the intensity of the firefight spreading around her almost too much to take in all at once. The earsplitting crack of automatic weapons fire, the flashing lights from the tracer rounds — it looked like what she’d seen on the news, but this wasn’t on a television screen in her comfy living room. She was in it. And whatever the enemy was, it was almost on top of them.
A thunderous roar suddenly rolled over the airfield as a fighter jet swooped in low, dropping a pair of cluster bombs at the far southern edge of the airport, each one splitting apart at a predetermined height and releasing hundreds of small bomblets on the thousands of yellow dots below.
As the fighter climbed, its afterburner throwing a long tail of blue flame behind it, the bomblets exploded all at once, like the finale of a fireworks display. The sound followed a second later, knocking two members of Carolyn’s team to their knees as they covered their ears with their hands.
“Up up up! Let’s go!” The sergeant was screaming, still waving his arm to follow. Carolyn saw him nervously shifting his glance back and forth from them to the firefight now just a few hundred yards away. She got the impression he really didn’t want to stay here any longer than he had to, or at least wanted to get the damned civilians off his hands so he could help his buddies.