Dulce Base (The Dulce Files Book 1) (20 page)

38 – Breaking Ranks

Dulce Tunnels (Level 2)

Thursday, May 24, 1979

The men moved forward, Mark and Turn in the lead. Ahead was a fork, a crossroads of sorts, where two of the tunnels branched-off.

“Hear that?” Turn said, glancing over at Mark.

“Faintly,” Mark replied.

The men waited a moment and when the others caught up they noticed how they began to look about, as if they too were hearing something.

“Women,” Turn said, “they’ve got them down…both of these tunnels, by the sound of it.”

“You’ve got good legs
and
good ears?” Aaron asked with a laugh. Turn just smiled and nodded.

“We’ve got to split up then,” Mark said.

“Whoa, but–”

“No buts,” Mark said, giving Aaron a hard look. “We’ve no super soldiers so we’re all in the same boat here. We can, however save as many as we’re able.” The men nodded, and Mark pressed on. “Here’s how we’ll do it – Jerry and Billy and I will head down this left tunnel and the rest of you will head down the other, Aaron in the lead.”

Mark looked to Turn, Andy and Johnny and they nodded. Then he looked to Aaron, who nodded as well.

The men went their separate ways.

~~~

“Over here,” Mark said, waving his free hand and holding up his .45 with the other. The men had just turned a corner, shortly after separating from the others. Jerry and Billy looked and nodded – ahead of them were rows and rows of tall medical cabinets, their design looking to be from the 1950s or so. Ahead was a fork in the path, where a scientist or alien or–

A Gray stepped out and Mark knew immediately that it’d tried a mental attack, and failed miserably. His .45 boomed out at the same time Billy’s and Jerry’s machine guns did the same.

The men held their eyes on the sights of their guns, ready for–

Two more Grays stepped out, and again the three guns fired to life, the sound echoing wildly in the large room, the old metal cabinets amplifying it ten-fold.

“Three,” Billy said. “How many more you think they’ll send?”

“I don’t know,” Mark said, and he got up the few feet needed to make it to the fork. It was clear, and he glanced back at the two. His eyes immediately went wide.

“Watch out!”

It was too late. Both Jerry and Billy turned around just in time to see the Reptilian swiping it’s clawed hand forward. Jerry’s glasses flew off and hit the floor, and a split second later were sprayed with their former owner’s blood. Billy’s eyes went wide and he pulled up his machine gun and began firing, the sight of Jerry’s face ripped from his head nearly making him sick.

“Aaahhh!” he screamed firing continuously into the Reptilian’s body. Mark fired at another coming up on them, and then rushed to Billy and grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Stop!” he shouted, and Billy did so, though he looked on the verge of tears. Both men looked down to see the clawed-hand of the Reptilian still embedded in the pulpy mass where Jerry’s face had been. Billy bent over and started to retch and Mark frowned.

“C’mon,” he said, getting one of Billy’s arms around his shoulder, “let’s get back to the port.”

~~~

The four men rushed forth, Turn in the lead. They rounded a bend and Turn looked both ways. It was clear. They just had to get–

BOOM!

The blast left the men dazed, and Turn on the floor. There was a ringing in his ears and a strong sense of déjà vu. He just happened to be looking forward, toward the large bay doors that led out of the large open area of Level 4 and back onto the road that led further down into the base. And there was Andy, more than fifty yards away now, and nearly to the doors.

“No, Andy!” Turn shouted, but it was no use – Andy was crazy with hysteria, fear and panic. There was no talking sense into him, but there still was a chance to save him. Turn looked over at Aaron, who gave the slightest of nods. Turn was already two dozen yards away by the time his chin stopped moving.

“You can’t…” Johnny said, still lying on the floor, dazed from the blast.

“We can’t leave a man behind,” Aaron said, then moved closer to his fallen comrade.

Ahead of them Turn’s cybernetic legs were more than a match for Andy’s human variety, and he caught up with him just as they crossed through the bay doors.

“Easy, Andy,” Turn said, grasping him by the shoulders and turning him around. Andy’s breathing was frantic and his eyes were wide – it was clear to Turn that he was in shock. “Listen, we’ve got to get–”

BOOM!

Turn didn’t know what it was, but it felt like some kind of blast of air that’d knocked him down. All he knew was that he was on the floor, on his side, and staring across the long, open floor of Level 4, right back at Aaron, who was slowly pulling a bloody knife from Johnny’s chest. Aaron looked up at just that moment and their eyes met, Turn’s going wide.

He whipped his gaze away, to his right, and saw Andy lying there, his head a bloody mess from where it’d hit the wall or floor or…something. Turn scurried over to him and immediately saw he was dead. He glanced back at Aaron, who was now wiping the blood from his knife onto Johnny’s clothing. Turn thought he’d be sick, like he would after someone had given him a swift kick in the gut. Instead he pushed himself to his feet and watched as Aaron put the large Bowie knife back in his leg-sheath and reached for the two 9mm handguns at his waist.

Turn gripped the stock of his AR-15, two choices before him. He took the second, he ran deeper into Dulce.

39 – Overrun

Dulce Tunnels (Level 6)

Thursday, May 24, 1979

“Aaahhh!” John yelled, his finger held down on the AR-15 machine gun’s trigger until it went click. He looked down at it for a brief moment, grabbed a grenade from the front of his jacket, and hurled it at the now-regrouping Reptilians.

BOOM!

“Reptilian soup,” Charlie said beside him, and John looked over from beneath his helmet just in time to see him cock an eyebrow. Resisting the urge to laugh at how absurd it all was, John let the machine gun fall to hang by its strap from his neck and grabbed the 9mm at his side.

Charlie saw none of that, for he’d turned his attention back to the hallway that led back to the tube train platform, the spot he hoped to hell Donlon and his CAT-4 team was still defending. The alternative was too grim to think on, especially when they were this close. After Walter had run on they’d fought their way back from the Hall of Horrors and that was no understatement. The Grays of the base, realizing they had a good chance of being overrun now that they’d been caught with their pants down, had largely disappeared. That didn’t mean things were any easier, it just meant that now there seemed to be a dozen Reptilians for each and every Gray they’d seen before. And whereas the Grays were relatively easy to kill – slow reaction times, frail bodies, and little defensive capabilities when the super soldiers were present – the Reptilians were fighters through and through.
Thank God they can’t do mind attacks
, he thought to himself for what seemed like the hundredth time as they turned another corner and he lit into another group of the things, his twin Colt .45s laying them down with holes through their skulls.

Beside him John wondered if the other teams were suffering as much as theirs had. They’d lost their two super soldiers, both in the same freak attack, and the pessimist in him told him that wasn’t something confined to his team alone. It was almost as if they’d been set up, but even that was too far for his negative way of looking at things, for the moment at least.

“There!” Charlie said, drawing John’s attention back just as he’d been snapping another ammo clip into his AR15.  Sure enough, it was the entrance to the tube station platform…and…

“It’s gunfire,” Charlie said, as if reading his thoughts, “Donlon and his boys are still holding.”

John nodded, hoping it was true, but knowing seeing was believing as well, plus–

“Back!” Charlie hissed, trying to keep as quiet as he could but startled by what he’d seen. Down the slight incline in the tunnel was a whole nest of aliens – a half-dozen Reptilians, two Grays, and one especially large Gray, the kind with long spindly arms and a height that caused it to hunch over lest it hit its massive head on the ceiling. He and John immediately jumped back and got around a corner in the tunnel-hallway.

“What the hell is that thing?” John asked.

Charlie bit his lip, but answered. “It’s those taller Type-B Bellatrax Grays, the ones Stan was talking about in that boring-as-hell briefing.”

“Well…can we kill it?”

“You bet – so long as they don’t detect us.”

John frowned. At least that last grenade of his had taken the Reptilians off their tail…for however long that would last. Now they had ten or so aliens ahead of them – three of them most likely mind attackers, as he thought of the Gray bastards as.

“What’ll we do?” he asked finally.

Charlie smiled. “Come on in here and listen.”

40 – All is Lost

Dulce Platform (Level 7)

Thursday, May 24, 1979

Colonel Roger Donlon stood there taking it all in and shook his head before wiping the sweat from his brow. A thousand – he’d lost count at a thousand. That’s how many women he’d seen coming running back from the tunnels CAT-1 and CAT-2 had headed down. Most were young, naked and scared out of their minds. Robbie, David and Fred had been more shocked by them than the initial Gray and Reptilian assault they’d had to deal with, and Donlon had felt about the same. They’d quickly come to and Robbie and Fred had begun corralling the women onto the one usable tube train they still had. That’d filled up in seconds it’d seemed, and then they’d jiggered the controls to send it shooting off toward New York, the one spot Donlon had been told would be secure.

The call from General Anderholt hadn’t come through on the satellite radio until the train had nearly filled up…almost like he’d had a camera and was watching them. Donlon had shaken the thought off immediately, especially when the general had told him another train would be shooting off to Los Angeles, all the men had to do was fill the next in line, the ones the Grays had been riding in on to kill them from just a short time before. They’d filled it even faster than the first before sending it off, and then another one was filled and shot off to Las Vegas. And so the process had repeated itself, again and again, until they were on their last train, this one only half-full, the tide of women now finally finished. Donlon looked back to the tunnels where the other teams had gone, and which were now blocked by a small group of Reptilians and a few Grays. At least the trains bringing in alien reinforcements had slowed, slowed considerably. Donlon figured they’d gotten wise to what they were up against, namely David’s and Fred’s M203 grenade launchers, which were blowing each train’s occupants to smithereens as soon as the doors gave their jolly jingle and opened up. It was a slaughter, plain and simple…but now they were out of grenades.

“Getting low on the Ingrams,” Robbie said from where the men were now bunched up near some crates they’d dragged together, near the last half-filled train of screaming women.

“And about out of machine gun rounds too,” David said.

Donlon nodded and looked to Fred. “Get that train out of here – no more women are coming now.”

Fred nodded and got to it, and less than a minute later he was back with them on the platform, the train steadily gaining speed as it headed off toward New York or California or wherever – the men had lost track. They were tired, but holding, and Donlon could only hope the other teams were doing as well as they, not a scratch on any of them, their super soldier thwarting whatever attacks the Grays were trying to hurl their way.

“Let’s break the flashguns out on their asses!” Robbie shouted.  “What the hell else we gonna do?”

Donlon frowned but didn’t disagree. As Bobbie spit some tobacco on the floor and said, ‘what the hell else were they gonna do?’

“Alright,” he said, then reached down and grabbed the flashgun, which he’d taken from a dead Gray’s hand during one of the brief respites they’d had since they’d been on the platform. It’d been the only one in sight, and he hoped it’d help them now. He tossed it up to Robbie.

“Here goes,” Robbie said after a moment, then fired the first blast, using the top button, vaporize. The beam hit one of the Reptilians in the mouth of the tunnel and immediately the creature puffed out of existence, a split-second spark and cloud and then just the black falling ash, a perfect little mound of the stuff rising perhaps an inch off the tunnel floor.

The other beasts howled and hissed their displeasure, and some of them even started gnashing their teeth and biting at each other, as if they were communicating their discontent, and desire to get away. The loss of a single one of their number to the flashgun just slowed the things, however, and the assault they looked ready to launch seemed all the more imminent.