CICADA: A Stone Age World Novel (31 page)

Bang-bang-bang.

Melanie looked out to the room and saw two invaders in red on the floor.

“Ha! I got two of them. Take that, suckers,” she taunted.

The fourth bolt came free; the fitting felt loose already.
Only one more to go
.

The fifth bolt unscrewed easily. She quickly tried to remove each of the bolts, now that they were loose.

Bang-bang.

“Umm, Melanie. I think my gun is broken. Can you get me another?”

Melanie got the last bolt out and stared at Deanna, who pointed the gun at her. It was empty. Damn, the backpack was on the other side of the door, with Leanne.

Melanie didn’t waste any time. Using her shoulder and head, she shoved against the underside of the elbowed-pipe. Her neck burned instantly. She pushed with everything now, including her hands; with the rush of adrenaline and panic, she didn’t feel them burn.

More gunfire. Lots of it from the turbine room.

“Melanie, they’re coming.”

“Push!” she goaded herself.

It broke free.

“Melanie?” She was whining now, backing away toward the tunnel door.

A red-robed figure sprang from the doorway and bounded toward Deanna. Melanie didn’t think, her reflexes working perfectly in spite of her fatigue. She yanked the knife from her waistband and heaved it at where the invader would be, an inch or two in front of Deanna, finding the man’s face. Deanna screamed and bolted for the tunnel door.

Close enough!

Melanie hopped down and kicked the valve lever, opening up the vent. Steam billowed out in great rolling torrents. Its heat and sulfur smell already burned noses and eyes.

She dashed to the door.

Someone screamed behind her. It was a cry of agony.

Melanie slammed the door, but just before it closed, she could see two men on the ground. One was writhing in pain, and she was sure his face was sliding off.

Westerling did not want to be stuck down in his bunker with Bill and two guards forever. He could barely stand being down here much longer. Besides, although the bunker was designed for weeks of hunkering down, it was only another layer of protection to allow his troops to secure the complex. There would be no securing Bios-2. He knew it was lost to the religious nutjobs who had crawdadded him.

He reached behind the short bar, grabbed a bottle—one of about a hundred bourbon bottles lined up—unscrewed the top, took a big satisfying drink and screwed it tight.

“Give me your weapon and hold this,” he said to one of the two guards, who took the bottle and handed the senator his sidearm. Westerling could feel his face leaking blood, but he didn’t care at this point. He was alive, but he had to figure out some way to get his daughter and granddaughter out. He hated that bitch, Reid, but knew that she was so damned dogged about things, she would probably protect them with her life. That would have to do, because there was no way back through the way they came, nothing waiting except their deaths.

He stepped around the bar and from behind the cabinet he pulled on a lever. The bar slid sideways, uncovering a stairway down into darkness. Westerling grabbed two flashlights and gave one to the guard with the bottle and the empty holster. “You’ll need this; it’s dark down there.”

He started down the stairwell, flashlight on, and pistol pointing the way.

“What do I do about him?” the other guard asked. “Do we leave him?”

“No, he may be useful.”

“Where are we going?” the flashlight-and-bourbon-toting guard asked.

“The way out!”

As he scuttled to his residence, his hobbled left ankle screaming with every other step, Max couldn’t help compare their current situation to his battle in Basra, just before the first Gulf War: just as then, he was on autopilot. A bullet ricocheted, tearing away earth directly in front of him, driving home the sensation. Although, he seemed to hark back to his time in Basra every time he went into battle, comparing and contrasting the battle.
Perhaps it was like this with every soldier
.

Saving Cicada now seemed hopeless. There were simply not enough of them to hold back this horde of invaders, who were still coming over the wall and through the break in their gate. Still, he was reluctant to surrender to Plan B. He wanted them to make one final stand. He knew their rifles on several of the roofs and Shingles in the Ops tower were making the enemy’s job difficult as they attempted to scurry over Cicada’s walls. Max hoped if they could put more firepower on the breach in the gate and pick off the occasional red-robe that made it to their grounds, maybe they would have a chance.

As he ran, he told everyone he saw to meet Tom in Ops, where he would get them a weapon if they didn’t have one. He dashed through the fencing that surrounded their compound.

Max ignored the angry pain in his twisted ankle, his shot-up bicep—he felt the suture open up earlier—and the pulsating throb in his head. After pounding past Ops and Comms, for a moment, he popped out into the open—he could almost feel some of the rifles on the wall train on him—as he sprinted to his residence. More bullets were directed his way, but all were missing the moving target. They appeared to him like heavy raindrops churning the gravel or dirt each time they struck harmlessly around him. Answering each raindrop, albeit much slower, was the thunder of Shingles’s Barrett from the tower, finding each shooter.

As Max slid in the gravel to his door, jarring his ankle even more, he saw several people huddled for cover against the First House next door; they were waiting for Plan B to be called, no doubt wanting to be first in line. He waved them forward to join him. They were at first tentative, but as fear fueled them, they rushed and then clustered around Max as he opened his door and left it open for them. None had seen the inside before and they all welcomed the invitation to its safety. Max was already opening his Toy Room, its overheads blinking illumination on its many guns and gadgets. He pulled down from the wall all five of the M4s, loading each, and then handing one each to two of the five standing in his living room. They were the only ones unarmed.

“Aren’t we going to Plan B?” pleaded one of their scientists—it was something like Dr. Stich or Switch, he couldn’t remember. He looked somewhat surreal in a white lab coat with a military rifle slung around him.

“No!” Max answered, tossed the other loaded M4s and some extra magazines on the couch and went back in for more supplies. He put on his tactical vest and stuffed it with two M4 mags and two spare AK mags. He loaded both his AKs, slung one around his neck and tossed the other onto the coffee table with extra magazines. He took two grenades, but left the rest; every resident may have been trained in using a rifle but not in using explosives. Finally, he opted for the Glock 17 Gen4, rather than his favorite .45, which he laid on the table inside the Toy Room. He needed capacity more than stopping power. After loading one magazine and attaching his rig, he shoved two more mags into his tactical vest. He was ready. But he still grabbed more pistols and loaded them.

“We have to go to Plan B,” Preston yelled as he bounded into Max’s, out of breath and surprised to see the others in the living room. They parted to let him in and two nodded in affirmation of Preston’s own call to action.

“Here.” Max shoved an M4 and two magazines on him, seeing he was unarmed. “We may be there soon, but not yet.” To the others he said, “Let’s not give up our home so easily yet. I think we have a chance if we can focus on the breach in the north gate and get the stragglers who make it down the wall. They haven’t won yet.” He threw the loaded pistols he was holding onto his coffee table.

Lisa and Magdalena came in next, both disheveled, but otherwise opposite sides of the same scale. All eyes turned to them. Lisa was frantic and out of breath. She seemed ready to burst with anxiety and fear. Magdalena, on the other hand, looked calm, as though she had been in many battles. Only Magdalena had a weapon, if you could call her little paring knife much of a weapon against guns. He handed each an M4 and an extra magazine.

“But, what…” Lisa couldn’t think of what to say.

“You five”—he pointed to the group of huddlers—“you focus on the west wall and anyone that makes it down. Keep behind the perimeter fencing and you’ll be safe. Please be sure you don’t shoot one of our own. Go!” They hesitantly shuffled out and around Max’s residence, most happy that he kept them close to the rendezvous point if the horn sounded.

“Everyone else, come with me,” he said and bounded out, M4 scanning. A robed man was running on the wall, toward their nearest stairwell. Max squeezed off one shot, dropping him, and headed to the Operations tower gate. The others followed behind until they all lined up behind one of four gates in the large perimeter fence that surrounded much of the compound, separating it from the remainder of the complex.

Max stood on a picnic table and announced, “This is the demarcation line. If the enemy makes it here, we’ll call Plan B.”

Shots were being squeezed off just above them and Max smiled when he saw it was Tom already set up on the roof of a single-story supplies building, next to Residences. He was firing over the fence at the breach in the north gate, where one red-robe at a time was trying to break through the opening. Most were cut down, but some were making it through and running for cover.

“This is where we make our last stand,” Max yelled and fired off shot after shot.

Johnson ascended the spiral stairs of the Operations tower. He could hear Shingles’s .50 cal Barrett booming above him every thirty seconds or so. With each blast, two or more shots were returned, pinging the outside metal shell. Most ricocheted off but some penetrated. They would eventually silence him; Johnson was going to make sure it happened quicker.

Johnson pushed his head out of the opening in the middle of the floor and watched. Shingles was firing, positioning himself in another of the tower’s four windows, reloading, finding a target, firing and moving to another window. He had been a pillar of Cicada, having joined two years before the Event, but he never saw what was coming next. Johnson pulled out his revolver, aimed and fired one round at the back of his head. That was the end of Shingles.

Johnson bounded up the last few steps and shimmied across the floor. The last thing he wanted to do was get killed by friendly fire after waiting so long for this moment. When he was at the south-facing window-wall of the Operations Tower shack, he reached up to the lever right below it and tugged it from left to right until it clicked into place. The
clack-clack-clack
of the gate assembly didn’t sound immediately because of the distance between the tower and that gate. So he chanced a peek to confirm his success. On the other side of the largest gate in Cicada that opened out onto the main access road, Johnson saw hundreds of robes waiting, for him.

At first he wasn’t sure it was opening, thinking it was the auroral light playing tricks with his eyesight and the distance. But when he saw the first robed warrior press through, he knew he’d done it.

“I’m out,” cried Lisa.

“Me too,” Magdalena said.