Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion (65 page)

To his left—to the south—a similar sight. The heart of the truss-style Memorial Bridge lay in the Mississippi, leaving a raised highway and on-ramp leading to nothing. Beneath that a substantial number of soldiers still fought from inside the remains of an industrial building as well as from trenches dug in the riverbank. A badly-scarred but still-functional Abrams tank stood defiantly in the open on Main Street and a pair of matching Humvees held their ground within the shell of a destroyed cistern along the river.

Still holding, Jon thought, but the real battle hasn’t even started yet.

The Order’s weapons for that ‘real’ battle assembled on the far bank with a massive cloud of smoke from the destroyed
Chrysaor
floating behind like the back curtain of a stage.

They resembled frogs. Big mechanical frogs; each the size of a house with spiked treads instead of feet. Armored plating, cameras for eyes, and mist-spitting tubes along their back ensured they would not be mistaken for Earthly creatures, but the frog analogy held in Jon Brewer’s mind.

They lined up among the flattened woodlands of the western side of the Mississippi; about two dozen of them. White mist attempted to hide their activities but humanity’s defenders saw the intent: the time had come for Voggoth’s army to cross the river.

In addition to the frog-things, the twin whirlwinds that had spent most of the battle dancing on The Order’s flank swept in to the river bank. As the swirling clouds of white and gray approached, the winds slowed and collapsed in toward a central point like a fog machine in reverse. From those dying winds materialized a host of demonic creatures.

Jon recognized their gray cloaks and skeletal faces with empty black eyes and elongated jaws: the Wraiths. Each of the two fading windstorms spawned hundreds of the foot soldiers as well as a pair of giants, each one eight-stories tall with skinny bodies and slack-jawed maniac faces. Their extremely long arms dragged on the ground and ended with big fists attached to rubbery wrists.

The Order’s assault did not go unchallenged.

Jon radioed, “Mortar teams open up, damn it! We need anti-armor up here!” Then on another frequency, “Shep, get ready.”

“Roger that, Jon, we’re ready to roll,” came the radioed reply.

The remaining mortar teams in the field to the north opened fire. Explosions tore across the western river bank. One of the frog-things blew into two pieces; a squad of Wraiths flew into the air and broke apart into grains of dust.

“Cassy, what’s your status?”

She radioed back, “I’ve left a few units at the school and am moving into position with the rest of my riders. Just give us the go and we’re there.”

He admired her enthusiasm.

Tendrils of white mist spread across the western dike in an attempt to cover the approach. The giants—all four of them—strode in big steps to the riverbank and added their unique form of artillery to the fight.

Their arms raised high above their savage heads.

A Javelin anti-tank missile hit one of the creatures in the chest, eliciting a roar of anguish and knocking it backwards before it could complete its strike.

The other three, however, were not stopped. Their fists hit the ground. Three focused earthquakes sped from the opposite bank and caused the water of the Mississippi to boil; a huge whirlpool sprung to life in the center of the river sucking down the overturned barges.

The tremor reached the east shore. What remained of the pavement of Front Street cracked and shook. Three huge sink holes opened to a hiss of steam and a geyser of water.

Soldiers—both career professionals and post-Armageddon civilian recruits—along the river retreated in panic; a few fell into the holes, most found new places to hide among the bombed-out, burned houses and shops of Quincy.

Two machine gun teams and a squad of irregulars joined the general in his foundation-bunker. Jon could not blame his men for retreating but Voggoth’s first intent—to clear a bridgehead—proved successful.

The protective shield of mist hung like a thin veil over the far side of the Mississippi, yet Jon could still see the creatures busy at work. The frog-things reached the water’s edge. Their mouths—if that is what they could be called—opened as if the things needed to vomit. A flap—what Jon’s eyes saw as a tongue—stretched overtop the water all the way to the east bank where it dug into the ground and root-like protrusions cemented the seal. An instant latter that tongue—the bridge—solidified into a material resembling hardened rubber.

“Shep! Cassy! Better get up here!”

More than 20 of the insta-bridges spanned the Mississippi from the warehouses and docks a quarter mile south of Jon’s position to Riverfront Park opposite Quisippi Island north of the now-destroyed Memorial bridge. The Wraiths came first across the bridges and the giants waded the waters taking pains to avoid the spinning whirlpool. Jon suspected the rest of Voggoth’s army lined up to follow the vanguard across.

“Get those guns going, boys,” he told the men around him who in turn used the edge of the concrete slab as leverage for their M249 machine guns. The rest of the soldiers—some in army-reg BDUs others in street clothes—added to the fight with carbines and hunting rifles.

Jon thought he might go deaf from the roar of the guns but they sounded sweet music nonetheless. The first pack of Wraiths to set foot on Bicentennial Park were ground into dust instantly. More followed.

A runner jumped into the open foundation carrying cartridges of ammo for the heavy guns. As the soldiers accepted the fresh bullets, Jon patted one of the heavy gunners on the shoulder and motioned down the destroyed block.

“Get your ass a hundred yards south,” the soldier saw where one of the bridgeheads faced only small arms fire. “We got more than just one bridge here!”

A hauntingly familiar sound came to Jon’s ears, forcing him to pause his instructions. The sound made him shiver, not so much from fear but from memories of frigid winds and frozen snow drifts.

He heard the sound of a Wraith screaming its deadly voice: “wwwwwhhhHHAAAAAAAAAAAAA.”

The screams came in a chorus. The jaws of the skeletal beasts opened to unfathomable width. The atmosphere between their black mouths and the targets of their fury shimmied as if the air molecules vibrated to the point of shaking apart.

Their voice acted as their only weapon, but proved lethal enough. While others could hear the sound, the weapon killed more precisely: Jon witnessed a foot soldier wearing a St. Louis Rams T-shirt and a blue baseball cap firing a shotgun from behind a toppled tree explode from the chest up. He saw a mortar team situated between a pair of crumbling concrete walls break apart as if unseen chains pulled their bodies in ten directions; the explosive shells around their feet detonated as a side effect.

But the Wraiths did not last long. Like the allies at Normandy in 1944, the first wave met a withering rain of fire. Puffs of dust up and down the line signified destroyed monsters one after another from rifle fire and grenades.

The giants did better. Two of the three reached the shore although both were littered with deep wounds from bullets and shrapnel. One stomped down on a machine gun nest crushing the crew; the second kicked an overturned car and sent it flying into a cluster of soldiers shooting from a collapsed store front.

Behind the giants, the waters of the Mississippi sizzled and then two more over-sized attackers emerged from the river and climbed the bank: the “Stone Soldiers” resembled 15-foot-tall statues carved in tribute to a Roman Legionnaire or a similar ancient warrior. They walked in big clumsy steps and waded into the fray. One knocked a Humvee over. A second crushed a girl firing an MP5.

Across the bridges came a flood of Spider Sentries of various configurations as well as Ogres and Monks taking advantage of the chaos caused by the rampaging giants. A line of hovering Shell-tanks—at least 20 of them—floated overtop the river waters and moved to support Voggoth’s foot soldiers. As the invaders poured onto the east bank Jon could feel the front collapsing—until…

The squeak and clatter of armored vehicles filled the general’s heart with joy. A line of Bradley Fighting Vehicles, APCs and a column of infantry descended the slope of Main Street toward the river front. General Jerry Shepherd, running with his troops, led the way.

“Cassy,” Jon radioed. “Get your riders onto the northern flank. We need to cut off either end of the attack and collapse everything down along the riverfront.”

She answered with an enthusiastic shout, “Roger that, General. Stonewall’s brigade rides again!”

Jon envisioned the cavalry galloping headlong into The Order’s bridgehead at Riverfront Park. A violent collision of men, horses, and guns against the ungodly creations of Voggoth’s war machine. While he imagined the happenings to the north, Jon could plainly see the battle raging around him.

Fire from Shep’s armored vehicles gored the giants and broke the Stone Soldiers into rubble; a Shell-Tank burst into flames from an armor-piercing round.

The newly-arriving infantry—the last of Jon’s reserves—engaged in close-quarters battle with Voggoth’s army turning Front Street into a battlefield as brutal and primitive as any in history.

Shot gun blasts at point blank range proved enough to decapitate Ogres. Spider Sentry weapons spat deadly pellets. Monk guns found targets; grenades blew apart everything. Shell-Tanks fired lethal bolts that exploded among the human ranks; one hit and disabled an approaching Bradley. An anti-tank missile hit one of those Shell-Tank; it fizzled and broke and collapsed.

And there stood Jerry Shepherd, the old war horse, in the midst of the fight with dust and dirt covering his officer’s uniform and a Stetson on his head. Shep wielded an M14 rifle and carefully selected targets. Jon watched him put down a Wraith at long range and then kill a charging Ogre with a perfect shot in the forehead.

Inspired by the sight, Jon used a concrete chunk as a stepstool and hauled himself out of the bunker, grabbed an M16 from the arms of a dead soldier, and fired into the enemy’s side of the mob on Front Street. His first shot hit one of the robed Monks that had just rammed a sword through some poor guy’s BDUs.

Jon never saw the Ogre coming, however. The brute picked up and threw a soldier halfway across the street then closed on the general. A huge, muscle-bound arm hit Jon square in the chest and sent him flying back into the basement foundation.

His world went black.

Woody “Bear” Ross greeted General Rhodes with a nod as the two stood twelve stories high on the roof of a tall, thin building overlooking the Mississippi.

Before Armageddon, the building—a grain elevator—belonged to ‘Cargill’ as proclaimed by the big logo on the west-facing side. In the years since, the building belonged only to Father Time, who had eroded the grain silos to rusty heaps and warped the trestles and conveyor belts that once loaded river barges.

“Twelfth mechanized infantry brigade is assembling on I-255, about three miles from here. We’re all ready to go.”

Bear knew Rhodes deserved a big tip of the hat for pulling those troops up from Hannibal so fast. They now served as the only formidable human force opposite Voggoth’s St. Louis battle group.

Speaking of which, Ross turned his attention west. The wind blew across the roof carrying a stench of fire and decay. Directly across the river from Ross’s position stood the landmark St. Louis arch on the grounds of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Somehow it still stood.

There should have been tall buildings beyond the arch. There should have been St. Louis. But with the exception of the frame of Bush Stadium, everything had been knocked flat. Supersonic blows from the Leviathan saw to that. Covered beneath the wind-swept banks of debris lay thousands of dead defenders.

St. Louis belonged to Voggoth. The storm clouds made for an angry sky encompassing downtown and reaching over the Mississippi. The Leviathan stood in stark contrast to the now-flat horizon as a monument to The Order’s power to destroy. Curls of smoke from smoldering fires and clouds of dust swirling around its massive legs gave it the aura of invincibility. Ross knew different; if only he had the means.

Artillery fired from the banks of East St. Louis and landed amid the Roachbots, Mutants, Ghouls, and assorted demons in the enemy’s army. The impacting shells cast small puffs of smoke that seemed insignificant against the backdrop of the towering Leviathan.

Rhodes stepped to Ross’ side at a rail on the edge of the roof. A handful of brave aids stayed with the Generals.

“Hey wait a second,” Rhodes saw something that surprised him. “You haven’t taken down that bridge yet,” and he pointed toward the Poplar Street Bridge that carried three different Interstates from Illinois to Missouri and back again.

“No. I’m going to let a nice bunch of his critters get across before we blow it.”

“Pinch him off, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What if they spot the demo charges?”

Ross said, “I got arty zeroed in on the bridge. We dropped smoke shells to make sure. But it doesn’t matter. Those things never go looking for mines or explosives. I think they like to act like it don’t matter.”

Rhodes agreed, particularly in the case of the Roachbots who led Voggoth’s advance to the river. They either did not care or were too insane to give it a thought.