Beyond Armageddon: Book 02 - Empire (16 page)

BOOK: Beyond Armageddon: Book 02 - Empire
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On this particular night, those mysterious and dangerous orbs hid behind a thick blanket of cloud cover.

As his armada of nine Eagle air ships paused one hundred miles northeast of
Montreal
on the northern bank of
Lake
Edouard
, he felt his nerves jitter once again, perhaps because he felt surrounded by darkness.

While he did not feel alone this time—not with one hundred well-armed soldiers and a compliment of K9s under his command—he felt vulnerable.

The lake stretched nearly two miles north to south but little more than a quarter mile across at its widest point. Tall coniferous trees dominated the land around the lake, stretching off into the unseen distance; a vast void of nothingness dwarfing the small ring of light carved by the floodlights of parked ships occupying the only stretch of open ground for miles.

Two specialty Eagles parked at the water’s edge near a sagging rack of canoes once rented to summer vacationers now left rotting on the rocky dirt and rough grass comprising the shoreline. Instead of rectangular passenger modules, a large round gray tank occupied the space between nose cone and engine baffles. One big hose ran from each ship to the lake, sucking H2o into the purification filters onboard the customized craft. Several soldiers oversaw the extraction process aided by lights mounted above the landing struts.

Five troop transports and two cargo carriers landed further inland, two of which were on the receiving end of the ‘fueling’ ships. The fleet formed a circle of sorts.

Jon walked toward the fueling pumps alongside Captain Casey Fink, an old-world military veteran and a big man; so big he could have been a professional wrestler. Around them within the circle, men sat on the ground or on access ramps enjoying a few minutes respite from the cramped quarters of the transports.

“Cold out,” Jon muttered in reference to the bite in the Canadian air; a frosty-white exhale accentuated the point.

“Refreshing,” Casey flapped his arms as if jump-starting circulation. “I managed to catch some shut eye during the trip. A little nip in the air is just what I need to wake up.”

“That’s because you didn’t ride with Reverend Johnny. The man snores loud enough to wake the dead.”

“Praise the Lord,” Casey mocked. “Either way, the men are happy to be out of those ships for a few minutes.”

“I’m not,” Jon cocked an eye toward the darkness threatening to engulf their oasis of light. “I don’t like it. Wish we didn’t have to refuel. Can’t those pumps work any faster?”

They arrived at one of the specially equipped Eagles filtering lake water for use in the airships’ hydrogen-powered engines. The hum and swoosh of the working pumps forced the men to raise their voices a notch.

Casey touched the metal tank and said, “Better let them take their time. Last thing we want is to have dirty fuel grounding one of the birds in the middle of no where.”

Jon snapped, “We’re already behind schedule. I wanted to get here before dark, but look at it. It’s dark.”

“Our pilot said it must be all the extra weight with the gear and the vehicles in the cargo ships that’s slowing us down. If we went any faster we never would have reached this stop.”

“That’s one excuse. Two ships were late getting started, one had mechanical problems and needed to be switched out, and then we find out someone miscalculated our cruising range so we had to power down to a flying crawl. This whole mission is borderline FUBAR and we’re not even at the sub yet.”

Casey peered at the northwestern sky. “I think it’s going to get worse. Must be a storm coming, I just saw lightening. Funny, it was pretty close, but no thunder.”

One of the K9s at the center of the makeshift camp barked. Then another. And another.

Jon felt his nerves kick into overdrive.

“Mother…Casey, get these pumps going, I want out of here.”

“Yeah…yeah sure,” any good humor drained from the soldier’s voice as more of the Grenadiers howled in warning.

Jon left Casey at the fueling ship and hurried toward the center of the sphere of light. Relaxing soldiers stood and tensed; others wandered out from inside ships.

A dozen dogs—mainly Huskies and Shepherds—trotted to the northwest edge of the camp staring at a line of giant evergreens that resembled more a castle wall than the rim of a forest.

Reverend Johnny emerged from one of the cargo Eagles wearing a white arctic jacket and carrying a machine gun.

“I fear something has taken note of our presence. Perhaps we should be leaving?”

Brewer—his eyes focused on the forest—answered, “We’re not done refueling yet. We have two birds that can’t take off.”

Johnny said, “It is our misfortune that despite the brevity of our stay something has stumbled upon—dear Lord, did you feel that?”
           
Both men glanced at the tough soil beneath their feet and felt another tremor.

The Reverend whispered, “Whatever it is—”

“—it must be big,” Jon finished and as the words left his mouth he saw the line of K9s growling at the woods step back, in unison, and their angry snarls grow more subdued.

He ordered, “Reverend, all the fueled ships airborne now.”

Both men saw movement in the otherwise black forest, and heard the unmistakable crack and crash of a tree falling. Then another. Then another.

“Rev, get going!”

As ordered, Reverend Johnny hurried toward one of the nearby cargo-carriers, identified by a larger side door. He went inside where the pilots should be waiting.

Jon managed to pull his eyes away from the forest and take stock of his men. Like him, they stood and watched, waiting to see what evil came their way. He pulled his walkie-talkie and radioed, “All ships that are refueled get airborne now. Drop everything, board now, and get airborne. Everyone else to arms!”

Suddenly, the K9s retreated in a sprint from the perimeter and gathered near the center of the camp as a giant came out of the forest.

Glowing red eyes some twenty-stories in the sky grabbed the onlookers’ attention first. As floodlights splashed on the creature, more details came into focus.

It wore a scaly, tinny skin that could have been flesh or possibly a kind of metal armor. It stood on two muscular, thick legs that, again, could have been organic or could have been manufactured struts. Ram horns wrapped its head on either side of those raging red eyes and it pushed aside mighty evergreens as easily as parting curtains using arms ending in cloven hooves.

A Goat-Walker.

Jon knew that Trevor encountered a goat walker for the first time during an expedition to the alien gateway in
Binghamton
,
New York
, five years ago. It had stepped into the world from some hellish dimension just as a truck bomb detonated. According to the story, a vortex formed when that gate collapsed, sucking the creature—and many of Trevor’s expedition including his friend Danny Washburn—to some unknown, but certainly horrid, fate.

While rare, they proved one of the most dangerous hostiles. Unlike the majority of alien monsters that could be categorized as predator or prey, a Goat-Walker did not conform to any logical law of nature. No nests or dens were ever found, the walkers did not appear to feed on their victims and their physical characteristics—particularly the hoof-like cloven appendages where hands should be—seemed ill suited to long-term survival.

They behaved more like an elemental force than a living animal; a walking tornado bent on destruction. As if natural selection on whatever nightmare world they hailed from favored fear and chaos in some warped version of Darwinian evolution.

“Javelins! Get the Javelins!” Brewer shouted at the soldiers assigned to the two transports still refueling. “There should be some onboard Eagle 2!”

The K9s mustered their courage and bound toward the walking skyscraper as it stepped into the heart of the camp. They stood no chance, of course, but instinctively knew they needed to buy time.

One after another, sliding ramps closed and airships took to the sky in haste. Reverend Johnny’s cargo Eagle shot up in a rapid ascent.

Meanwhile, small arms fire from the thirty-men not onboard fleeing ships pelted the creature like pebbles thrown at a battleship, while the dogs yapped and snarled.

It hovered over the camp as if considering what to stomp first. A transport parked at the outer rim of the camp took off right at the giant’s feet, drawing the creature’s attention. The pilot went to full acceleration at the same moment the monster swung a hoof-like hand. The blow missed by less than two feet.

With one potential victim out of reach, it returned its attention to the ground and stepped toward a crowd of men. They managed to scatter clear of the impact but the tremor knocked them off balance. The beast brought one of its warped ‘hands’ to the ground aiming to crush one of the men who escaped the first blow. A Grenadier dashed in front of the fallen soldier, grabbing the monster’s attention at the last second and averting the strike.

Jon raised his carbine and fired, aiming for the inferno-red eyes. His bullets either missed or did nothing; it seemed this animal offered no weak spots, no quick solutions. Nonetheless, he would try to distract and confuse the monster while the transports escaped.

Two bolts of energy blasted from Johnny’s airborne cargo Eagle via a turret mounted below the nose cone. Like the airships themselves, those energy weapons had been captured from the ‘Redcoat’ aliens following the
Battle
for
Wilkes-Barre
.

One massive leg and the hoof at the end of it kicked, sending a broken dog flying and a pair of soldiers tumbling. A second kick smashed the side of a transport Eagle. The side door crumpled in and vehicle nearly toppled as it took to the air.

Another stream of energy from the cargo Eagle rippled across the beast’s snout, scorching its goat face and eliciting a roar that echoed through the wilderness. The very sound felt like an assault; Jon instinctively cowered for the briefest of moments. There was something about this entity that made it feel even more alien than the extraterrestrials that had invaded Earth: as if even among the invaders, this thing was an abomination.

A cloven hoof where a hand should be swung at a flying Eagle, glancing a landing pod and sending it into a flat spin. The engines screamed as the plane spiraled toward the treetops, grazing branches before regaining control.

The Goat-Walker turned again to the humans and dogs scurrying around its feet. With a grunt that sounded like an explosion of compressed air, it leaned over and struck with both arms, pounding one into the backbone of a refueling transport and crushing two men and a dog with the other.

Two contrails raced skyward and a pair of anti-tank missiles walloped the gargantuan in the neck. Pieces of what might have been either flesh or building materials poured down as well as a muddy red liquid.

The creature stood to full height and howled.

“Keep firing! Keep firing!” Jon ordered even as he cursed the waste of precious ordnance.

A hand grabbed his shoulder from behind; he nearly jumped out of his skin.

Casey Fink shouted in his ear, “They’re done refueling! We can bug out!”

“Do it!” Jon shouted as the creature swung and missed at the two soldiers who had launched the missiles. “Take off! Everyone get onboard and get the hell out of here!”

Troops hurried for the two remaining transports while the two tankers retracted hoses from the lake.

“Withdraw!” Brewer shouted, this time directing his order at the K9s. The dogs wasted no time in scampering onboard Eagle 2.

Into his radio Jon transmitted, “We need covering fire to take off. Blast the damn thing!”

A swarm of Eagles fired potshots at the beast from energy turrets.

Jon slung his rifle and raced onboard Eagle 3 where Casey Fink shouted orders of his own into his radio: “Tankers, get out of here!”

A voice answered, “Retracting pumps now, Sir.”

“Just friggin’ go. We’re out of time!”

Eagle 2 blasted away from the surface. The sound drew the attention of the snarling monster.

Jon, standing at Eagle 3’s open side door, saw two of his soldiers—one man helping a limping woman—emerge from cover at the edge of the forest and hurry toward his transport. He waved encouragement to them but the wounded woman could only move at half-speed.

The Goat-Walker apparently realized most of its prey had escaped and aimed for the three ships remaining on the ground: Jon’s ship number 3 and the two tankers.

“Come on!” Jon shouted at the limping soldiers. “Haul ass!”

One of the hideous legs of the massive creature thudded to the ground just ten yards from the transport’s side door, half as close as the fleeing soldiers.

Jon raised his hand to wave again, but the sliding door slammed shut in front of his face. He turned to see Casey Fink pressing the ‘lock’ switch. The pilot must have reacted to the ‘sealed’ indicator on his console and the Eagle took to the air with such acceleration that Jon and Casey fell to the floor.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jon shouted with the faces of the abandoned personnel etched in his mind.

“Saving our asses, General,” Fink answered.

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