2021 (38 page)

‘We must go and warn General Iram immediately
then’ uttered Stuart as he went to leave.

Then he paused for a moment.

‘But how can I
explain to him quite how we
know
all this?’ he pondered.

‘I’ll tell him I know
this, because I could see them from the airship and have just worked out their rate of progress’ suggested Jack.

‘Exc
ellent!’ nodded Stuart before Jack quickly passed him and then ran off towards General Iram’s tent.

‘We’d better get our heads together on working out a way to
automatically set off the first line of guns’ suggested Joan urgently.

‘Yes
and it will have to be something that doesn’t rely upon electricity’ nodded Stuart as they both sat down and began furiously scribbling away on some note pads.

Jack
meanwhile, made it to the General’s tent.

‘Oh, hello, Professor
’ one of the guards outside greeted him.

‘I need to speak to the General urgently’ insisted Jack.

‘The General has turned in for night you’ll have to come back tomorrow’ insisted the army guard.

‘If I don’t sp
eak to him right now, there may not be any tomorrow’ Jack stated firmly.

Reluctantly, the guard let him through.

The General was just studying his maps as usual and he looked up at Jack as he briskly walked in.

‘
General, I have just worked out the Migrator’s progress from my latest airship observations’ explained Jack urgently. ‘If the Migrators continue at their current speed they will hit us just before dawn tomorrow!’

‘DAMN
!’ uttered the General ‘then we must get ready for them.’

‘There’s more, General’ explained Stuart ‘there is strong evidence that as the Migrators advance
, so they will extend their dead zone to prevent our electricity from working.’

‘So what does
that mean?’ queried General Iram.

‘It means
, when they first strike us early tomorrow, it will be in total darkness!’ explained Stuart.

‘GOD DAMN THESE THINGS!’ cur
sed the General ‘THEN WHAT CAN WE DO?’ he uttered banging his fist down on the table in front of him in frustration.

‘I thought, General, I mean, my friends are now working on a system whereby we set traps
, so the moment the Migrators reach us all our guns automatically fire off’ suggested Stuart.

‘Can we do that?’ asked the General.

‘We’re not sure at the moment’ Jack admitted
‘it may work on a simple trip wire or similar’ he suggested ‘but once our troops hear the guns fire they will then have to just keep them firing non-stop from then on’ urged Jack.

‘BRILLIANT!
THEN LET’S GET GOING!’ shouted the General as he stormed out with Jack struggling to keep up with him.

Just out
side, they met both Joan and Stuart who explained they had worked out a way to quickly set up a serious of bells the Migrators would trigger off.

‘We can use all the vehicles you ordere
d to be left out there, General and string together either rope or metal wire between them, putting bells and things on them’ explained Stuart.

‘If we have
metal wire the Migrator’s idea of attacking in total darkness may even backfire on them, as at the speed they travel it could seriously injure them running into it!’ suggested Joan with a smile.

‘
Excellent!’ smiled General Iram ‘alert all the men!’ the General then ordered as using a sophisticated method of banging a spoon onto a saucepan, the guard alerted all the troops all around them.

‘RIGHT NOW LISTEN HERE! I WANT EVERY AVAILABLE MAN ON THIS!’
he shouted and the General then explained what needed to be done.

As Stuart went to walk away General Iram grabbed his arm.

‘General?’ he queried.

‘I’d been thinking, Professor Keys, is it possible for you to work out the
exact angle the guns would need to be at where the trucks we left out there all are?’

‘Yes, possibly, I expect my
daughter could do it’ Stuart nodded ‘why, General, what have you in mind?’

‘I was thinking of the old English archers’
nodded General Iram. ‘They all used to fly all the arrows high into the air to make an instant strike and cause casualties that actually slowed their enemies advance. Could we not do the same? It would mean altering the angle of the guns and then putting them back down again?’

‘I’ll get my daughter and Jack onto it, General’ replied Stuart ‘actually, that’s a brilliant suggestion
, General’ smiled Stuart.

‘Just sou
nd military tactics’ smiled General Iram before they both had to rush off.

Stuart and Joan
between them designed a simple trip wire system that could be set up all along the front line, to stretch between the vehicles they had left out in what would eventually be the battlefield and very quickly the word was passed all along the front line for everyone to set up the same. Then it became a race against time to get them all set up before morning.

All along the line manual
ly operated sirens had also been set up, so the moment any part of the line was attacked or the alarm wire had been triggered,
everyone
would know to then commence firing!

Jenny
, after being supplied the necessary information from Jack quickly calculated the distance and so the angle the guns would have to be changed to for their initial strike to work, whilst all the Captains in charge had already established a way to correctly check the position of the guns to return them back to normal again.

All the troops slept where they planned to fight and make their stand against the Migrators first thing in the morning. Remembering they could well find themselves fighting in pitch darkness, they positioned themselves carefully so they could feel their way around the guns and find their ammunition easily to hand.

This
was to be the beginning of the war against the Migrators, a war that could decide the fate of the entire human race!

Day Twenty Four:

30
^th
January 2021

The International

Fortress Defence Wall

Just Outside San Diego,

United States/Mexico Border.

I
t was a really restless sleep everyone had that night.

General Iram had ordered
all lights to be left on, especially all along the front line, so the moment the Migrators extended their dead zone to include their defence wall, the International Defence Army would then know.

Stuart, Joan and Jack had stayed up even later whilst they began to wind down a little
, but also Joan wanted to share an idea she had thought up.

‘Looking at our
guns and thinking about if the Migrators begin to fly, I came up with this idea’ she explained. ‘I know it’s too late for us now, but maybe if we survive this we could use it later if we need to?’

She then showed Jack and Stuart a rough sketch she had done.

‘I see’ nodded Stuart as he looked at it ‘mounting the gun up on a turntable and using two small air pressure engines to control it, it could moved around.’

‘I see and the guns move up and down and using much shorter foot long arrows we could have a magazine of ten to twenty missiles allowing rapid fire before needing reloading. This is just brilliant, Joan’ smiled Jack ‘I wish we had this now.’

‘I was just thinking about how we
could shoot them down in the air’ Joan nodded.

‘Beautiful and very smart’ nodded Stuart as he smiled
at her.

‘Anyway, we’d all better get some sleep’ smiled Joan ‘be
fore it all kicks off’ and both Stuart and Jack nodded their heads in agreement.

In truth though, knowing the Migrators could begin their attack on them at virtually any moment no one was really able to sleep
at all, not a single wink.

Stuart just lay awake in his compartment. Then he quietly called out to Jack who was in the compartment next to his.

‘Jack, are you awake?’ he whispered.

‘Yes, I can’t sleep’ Jack
replied.

‘I was just thinking, if they extend the dead zone
, wouldn’t we all be disintegrated?’ pondered Stuart.

‘Maybe’ replied Jack ‘I don’t know how it works.’

‘No, me neither’ replied Stuart.

‘Maybe
we’d all be better off anyway, I mean if that happened, at least it would be quick’ pondered Jack quietly.

‘What do you mean, Jack?’ puzzled Stuart.

‘Well, given the choice
, I think I’d rather be instantly disintegrated in my sleep than devoured by a Migrator.’

‘Quite’ agreed Stuart.

Both Alec and Tom had been left to sleep in the main living area of the tent an
d they couldn’t sleep either.

Then a
round 4 a.m. all the lights around the camp suddenly went out!

Stuart instantly sat up on his camp bed and reached for his cigarette lighter.

It wouldn’t light!

‘Christ!
’ he uttered in shock ‘it’s
started
!’

All the troops on the front line
now sat there on full alert, just waiting for any sound of an alarm bell having been tripped.

Then, just before 5 a.m. one sounded and quickly others followed!

‘
COMMENCE FIRING
!’ An army Captain shouted as troops began firing off their guns as the sirens immediately sounded all along the front line!

Instantly, Stuart and the others
all sat up startled.

The very first salvo of shots were all fired high into the air by every single gun, exactly how Jenny had worked them out, then they were very quickly lowered to their correct angles once again.

Outside on the front line, the guns were now firing off in strict order so that as one team reloaded their gun, then the next would fire and so on, and the same was being done by every team of every nationality all the way down the line! The result was exactly as Stuart had predicted as it formed a non-stop salvo of missiles!

Each A
rmy Captain was in charge of his own section and there were hundreds of sections all along the wall defences, consisting of almost as many troops from as many different nationalities.

They were
all working completely blind having to fumble around for the ammunition and feel their way for the loading chambers and release triggers.

As the hundreds of thousands of missiles now rained down onto the Migrators
, frightening screams could be heard all the way down the line as literally hundreds of thousands of Migrators had either been killed running into the hidden alarm wires or had been struck by the hundreds of thousands of metal missiles as they suddenly come raining down on them!

Soon
, the very first loud screams were heard as they approached closer to the defences, as the first Migrators were struck and impaled by the flying missiles! Their screams of pain became almost deafening as they got closer and then just gave out one loud high pitched squeal before they finally dropped down dead!

Jenny just put her hands over her ears as she just cried in terror!

‘DAD, WHAT’S
THAT TERRIBLY SOUND?’ she screamed as Stuart just stumbled around in the dark and tripped over as he ran to hold her in his arms.

‘I think that’s the sound of the Migrators themselves’ he told her.

‘God, what a
horrific sound!’ commented Joan as they now all sat in the complete pitch dark in their large tent.

Meanwhile, the sound the
guns themselves being fired, were surprisingly noisy. Stuart had expected them to be relatively quiet as no explosives were being used. It would seem though that although not explosive by their nature, the sound of thousands of these guns firing was none the less explosive and quite deafening in fact now!

Using the tactic first employed by th
e British infantry as the first line of guns fired and then reloaded, then another line would then fire off and so on, so a non-stop salvo of missiles impaled thousands upon thousands of the giant creatures and temporarily halted their advance!

The Migrators had been completely caught by surprise by the sheer ingenuity of the human’s defences.

Not for long though, as a second and much stronger wave of Migrators now came and their screams now became even more deafening as the battle now really began in earnest!