Blood Soaked and Invaded - 02 (18 page)

The building doors were automatic, so we didn’t need to do anything more active than walk through them. Charlie almost set off at a run when the smell of fresh coffee caressed our nostrils and I decided to hold my comments and just keep up with her.

Mess halls are probably the same all over the world. The few that I’ve been inside had no décor, abysmal seats, funky food smells and a long buffet-serving table of some kind. For the most part, ours was an improvement. Our food smelled better, and that counts for a lot when you think about ambiance.

However, the military industrial complex does not understand décor. They had hung modern, semi-expressionistic color field paintings on the walls. Unlike real art they didn’t inspire any emotional involvement. I remembered Barbara’s comment about the paintings from earlier that day.

“Oh. They’re so… culturally sensitive.”

Her timing with that comment was superb. Her husband, Nate, had a mouthful of food at the time. His laughter nearly choked him and he shot something out of his nose.

Charlie and I were not the only people in the room. All of the community’s kids were hanging out, being teenagers and probably consuming more coffee than was good for them. Then again, this isn’t your normal gaggle of teen angst. These youngsters were superhuman, just like the rest of us. God knows that has to add another layer of freakiness to their lives.

Little David Klein, the youngest of our local children, since Siddig and his family died, was the first to notice Charlie and me, but hesitated for just a second before greeting us. At seven years old he hadn't sprouted the teenage self-consciousness that could have stopped him from running over to say “Hi.” Yet, he looked a little uncomfortable around the older kids and I guess that he probably didn’t want to seem uncool.

It surprised me a little when he broke from the pack and came over to see us.

“Mr. Frank,” he said with a tiny wave. “How are you?”

“Not bad. How’s things David?” I couldn’t help but smile at him. The boy was charming enough to disarm a pack of angry, hatchet-wielding old ladies. His older brother and sister did not inherit the charming gene.

“Pretty interesting! We’ve got video school now and I tested into fifth grade Language Arts!”

“I am not the least bit surprised. If anyone could do that, it would be you.” I kept smiling, messed up his hair, and noticed that the rest of the kids had wandered over into a rough semi-circle around us.

“So, Mr. Frank… ” Nancy Smith, our 15-year-old beauty queen barely got the words out of her mouth before I hollered at the top of my lungs.

“Hard cover! Now!” I slammed into the pack of kids and Charlie from a standing start and toppled everyone like dominoes.

There was a noise outside that sounded like a shrieking whistle ending in a pop. Within a quarter of a second after the pop there was another noise that sounded like an electrical transformer blowing up, a horrible shattering crackle. It reminded me of the nasty sound of the discharge when Channing blew himself to dust on our underground generator.

The eardrum-ripping whistle sounded again, and I knew that whatever attacked us had retreated. Mere moments later, the inside of my head was filled with voices. Apparently I had broadcast my warning as well as bellowing it at the top of my lungs.

All those voices in my head were a cacophony I couldn’t take, so I bellowed at all of them. “Shut up! Who was outside? Somebody give me a status report! Now!” I felt everyone ping on the Townhall channel inside my head, except for one. “White? White? Give me a status report!”

He was the quietest of the men that showed up to help us out when Nate and Flower went walkabout a few days prior to our mission to rescue Bajali. I regret that I never had the chance to talk to him or get to know him. I knew he was gone almost as soon as I called out for him in my head.

“Frank, we’ve got fatalities out here. You and Charlie need to stay with the children until we get some other people to hold that location. How are you fixed for tools?” Buttons broadcast it to everyone, which was probably smart because it served as a solid status report for the group. I followed it in kind.

“We’re lightly armed. All the kids are present and accounted for. Nothing else is incoming from hostiles, at least nothing I can feel.”

“All right. Everybody stay put.”

“Buttons? It’s White, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Three, maybe four guards, as well.”

“Fuck.” Then it was quiet inside my head.

I took stock of our set of kids, and aside from Ezra rubbing the side of his face, everyone looked to be in good shape. That isn’t to say that there weren’t a few tears and terrified expressions, but they were in one piece and that was the only thing that truly concerned me.

“Okay, everybody, let’s get up and get seated,” I told them.

Getting up off of Nancy Smith was unsettling. I had never noticed that our pretty girl had sprouted curves until then and it was quickly filed away in my head before I could really process what my hands had been grasping.

“Frank, what was that?” Charlie grabbed me by my elbow as I got up.

“Something entered our airspace, and I knew it was hostile,” I said as I shrugged because I didn’t have any other information beyond that. “My critters kicked up a warning.”

“Shit,” she looked upset at herself, remembering that young people were present, and amended her exclamation to something more apropos. “Sugar!”

The kids were sitting quietly, looking a little shell-shocked, and I really couldn’t blame them. One or two months was too little time for young people to adjust to having your neighborhood and life disrupted by violence. In my opinion, it wouldn’t be all that hot for adults either.

Omura pinged us with an update. “Guys, I’ve got footage from the CCTV cameras. I can’t broadcast it to you, but when Nate and Barbara show up, hand off the kids to them and meet me in the meeting room in the Lab Block.” Omura added, “I just got a ping from Nate. They’ll be with you two…”

“Right now.” Nate cut Omura off as he and his wife came through the canteen door. They were both armed for bear. “Tag, my loves! You two are it!”

“Since when did we graduate to full-on love, my guidepost to dark chocolate desires?”

“When shit calms down, Frank, I will tell you just how good it is to have you around to mess with again. Get your asses over to Omura, and then fill us in about what the fuck that was. Cool?” Nate was in full expressive mode, meaning that he didn’t really care that children were present and I was perfectly all right with that. Barbara was scowling but it kept alternating with a smile so I didn’t get my knickers in a twist over it.

“We have to grab some road food first, but,” I looked around and noticed that Charlie was headed toward the kitchen, “we’ll kite out of here momentarily.” We did, indeed.

The remains of White and the indeterminate number of guards were in the middle of the street between Building Two and the corner. Ramos, Fitzgerald and several of the local guard staff were attempting to examine and document what was left of that group of people. I glanced at the anthropomorphic charcoal sculptures as Charlie and I ran past and I was very grateful that I didn’t have to do more than that.

Something about looking at blackened objects that used to be people unsettles me quite a bit. That is probably a holdover from the swath of Hell that we’d created outside the building my father had taken over with his cult of personality. I will never look at pork rinds the same way again. In fact, I hope no one ever hands me a bag of them because I’d have to scream like a little girl and club them over their insensitive skull.

The charcoal sculptures were much less colorful and didn’t scream. Objectively, that should have made the tableau easier on my sensitive aesthetic soul. I have learned the hard way that dead people who did not deserve to die kick Mister Objectivity square in the nuts and invite Missus Emotional Involvement over for tea.

Yes, I was entirely grateful that Charlie and I were running away from that because we were required elsewhere.

Building One takes up quite a bit of space. Nate and Barbara were relocated in order to build it in the second largest area of uninhabited houses. They were good sports about it, and I don’t blame them. Their new house is right next door to Baj and Jaya, and I know that the government tarted up the interior a bit before they moved in.

I remember sitting outside the store during my convalescence and watching the troop of people in funny clothes going in and out of the box across the street. Of course, now that I have my brain back, I know that the funny clothes were biohazard suits and that the box in question was next door to the Sharma’s house.

No sense in putting contract labor to risk of becoming friendly enough with all of us that we could give them our little gift that keeps on giving. I wonder if they got hazard pay of some kind for working here, or bonuses for doing so much in such a small amount of time. It wouldn’t surprise me if every single one of them got very thorough physical exams after being in our general vicinity for any length of time.

I imagined a conversation that went something like this. “Have you had any strange symptoms such as vomiting, cold sweats, saliva that brings back nutrients when you are too wounded to move, or any desire to lick metal objects?” Then the Doctor would likely look in every bodily fluid, orifice and pore for some indicator that they’d been colonized.

Colonized. That’s a great word. It has “colon” in it. Those poor workers probably got federally mandated anal probes for their trouble, come to think of it.

My brain was in a really strange place when we got to B1.

When we swung into the meeting room, a gigantic screen showed a grainy image of something that looked far too much like a UFO for comfort. Matt “Flower” Wilson waved us over into a knot of our friends. Major Kenney and a few of his people occupied the opposite side of the room.

“Frank, how did you know something was about to happen?” Omura barely gave me time to get myself situated in the huge space before he pinned me down with that question.

I had to think about it for a moment before I said anything, and was about to answer with a resounding “I have no idea,” when my mouth was hijacked.

“There was a massive electromagnetic disturbance and an instant change in the local air pressure. That seemed to indicate that something dangerous was about to arrive. I felt that a warning was absolutely necessary... ” I felt the words forming in my mouth, but the information was coming from somewhere in my head that was unfamiliar. Much like the warning shout, it was my colony of nano-buddies using my vocal cords. Every eye in the room got wide when I clapped both hands over my mouth, muffling whatever other noises might have meandered onto my tongue.

“Frank, why do you look completely panicked and have both hands over your mouth?” I can only imagine what I must have looked like to get such a question from Bajali.

I gently took my hands away from my face, thinking that something more bizarre could happen at any moment. “Baj, we’ve got a whole bunch of shit to talk about when this meeting is over. For the time being, let’s just say that my self-control isn’t as fantastic as we might want it to be. Work for you?”

He nodded. Omura looked befuddled, but appeared to move the issue to his own mental back burner in favor of resolving the data on whatever attacked us.

“Riiight. Great. We’ve got footage of this craft entering our airspace and firing some sort of weapon that would have fried every external electrical system in a non-hardened area, had it not been so precise. I’m sure you two saw the impact area on your way here. Anyone have any thoughts?” Omura never took his eyes off me.

Bajali spoke up first. “The U.S. military has been testing ‘lightning guns’ for some time. Nothing that I have ever read about would fit into a craft that size. Most of the test units were the size of an eighteen wheeler.”

“I tend to agree on the lightning gun theory, considering the state of the corpses, and I know for a fact that we do not have functional units that would fit on anything smaller than an aircraft carrier.” Omura’s brow furrowed and he turned toward Buttons, who was sitting quietly at the end of the front row. “Buttons, I don’t suppose you’ve got any data on this type of craft or weapons system that I don’t, but I’d be really happy if you’d prove me wrong.”

“I have no knowledge of any miniaturized plasma weapons in any phase of development. While I have seen designs for a similar vehicle, to my knowledge no agency has succeeded in assembling one.”

“That is data from the usual source?” Shoei asked.

“Yes. Symbol K and related sources,” Buttons answered, and then seemed to pull himself into a very compact ball of silence.

“Omura, you want to explain that a little more,” Shawn drawled, “some of us aren’t as well informed as you or Mister Buttons over there.”

“Shawn, to be completely blunt about it, we have seen vehicles that are similar,” he made little air quotes to go with “similar”, and kept on speaking. “The noise this vehicle made was unusual. The craft we are familiar with are silent, so it might represent a new or heretofore unknown agency.”

Shawn raised both eyebrows. “You’ve seen shit like this before?”

“Yeah. I’ve told you that I’ve seen and experienced things that you absolutely would not believe. This slots right into that category.” He did not look the least bit happy explaining himself to Shawn. “I have been present at events in Alaska and California that would have your hair standing on end. This is why we’ve got the sorts of satellite weapons that we do. I really don’t think they’d do us much good with our current set of hostile visitors, because the tracking systems are only good for stationary Earth-bound objects.”