SODIUM:2 Apocalypse (12 page)

The following morning Janie called down from the tree. Our prey was approaching. It took another 20 minutes to settle over the substation and to drop its cables. Two small robotic helpers emerged and went about their task of hooking the great ship up just as each time before.

My hands were sweating with the anticipation of what we might be unleashing on our foe. David placed his hand on my shoulder and said that we might want to wait until the beast was almost fully recharged. If we were lucky enough to get explosions a full load of fuel, even though it was only electricity, still might help. The kids were warriors and thinkers and I felt blessed to have them fighting by my side.

The waiting was even more excruciating than before, but what he said had a bit of wisdom to it. I couldn’t help but think that maybe all that power would also be what might save the ship somehow. I was a very patient person, but the minutes seemed like hours and the hours like days.

A full 20 hours after the ship had connected we decided it was time for a show. We all climbed the tree and struggled to settle in on our little platform. As we counted downward from ten I finally pushed the button on the walkie-talkie.

Nothing happened! What had we done wrong? Had the ship somehow drained the power from our guns? Was it interfering with our signal? Was it the lightning? It was turning into a catastrophe when everything up until then, excluding the lightning strike, had gone so well. Had the lightning fried our walkie-talkie radio on the other side? My heart sank further with each of those thoughts.

That’s when Janie pointed out that my radio was not switched on. Here I was about to do battle with Man’s greatest foe ever and a teenage girl had it together better than I. I flipped the power switch and keyed the mic. What happened next gave me goose bumps then and still gives me goose bumps when I tell of it today. What an adrenalin rush…

The four guns fired simultaneously up into the great ship. Debris shot downward as the hypervelocity tungsten penetrated its hull. We had positioned our guns in just the right places and only a moment after I keyed the mic the behemoth flipped upward at the point of its only functioning propulsion disc while the other end crashed violently down to the ground on the beach.

For a few seconds the great ship stood upright on its side as we watched the flashes from secondary explosions on the underside of the great beast. The whole scene was surreal and no movie special effects could have ever done it justice.

In a final death roll the ship finished its flip and crashed into the ocean waves upside down... fire and smoke billowing from its now exposed underbelly. We watched with our jaws dropped and a few seconds later were ecstatic when the rumbling sound finally made it to us. As the once mighty ship now lay upside down and on fire, it became evident that it was a complete and utter victory.

At that moment we were all experiencing what was probably the greatest group hug for mankind in his short existence on the planet. In our excitement we almost fell out of the tree. We watched for several minutes as nearly half of the great ship began to burn. All I could think of at that instant was "burn baby burn".

The massive ship now lay just off the beach, upside down in about 30 feet of water. A few minutes passed and then a major explosion blew nearly a quarter of the damaged ship to kingdom come. I surmised that it was the power storage source now interacting with the saltwater.

Again the results were spectacular and I didn’t know if mankind would ever experience a prouder moment. Rachel had the digital camera out and was snapping pictures of the action. I could only imagine the money those pictures would have brought if there had been a media around to fight over them. The images gave us one more reason for an eager return to home, so that we could relive our ultimate moment.

It then occurred to me that there was another ship out there of the same size, backed up by one ten times as large. It was time for us to move as we had already wasted precious minutes with our gawking and celebration.

We scampered down the tree, unhooked our mobile gun from the power line and began to break camp. David took one final look with the binoculars and informed me that at least one of the fighter ships was now circling over the wreckage. We gathered ourselves as fast as we could and made a beeline down our getaway road. In two hours we were secure in our compound with the vehicles safely hidden away.

The excitement was just too much for us and we stayed up all night reliving the moment over and over. Rachel had taken the camera and recorded the event live before snapping away with pictures. We watched the recording again and again that night, each time brought celebration.

For me I felt as though I had finally done something right in my life, and for the girls and David it was thoughts of justice for the slaying of their loved ones. The best part of all was that we had all escaped unscathed and were ready and eager to fight another day.

We let three weeks pass before deciding to venture back towards Daytona. After a short stop just up from the Ferrari memorial to put a charge on our mobile gun we headed to Two Mile camp.

When we arrived the first item of business was to again hook up our remaining gun to the grid. Two minutes later and we were ready for battle if needed. We would have to be completely lucky with a ship just happening to fly directly into our firing line, but it felt good to at least have something for our defense.

Rachel and Janie shouted down from the tree perch that the wreckage was still there. There were several of the fighter ships hovering around it, and what looked like some ongoing activity on top of its overturned hull.

We would have to make our way back down to the Daytona camp to get a better look. With the fighters around we would have to be extra careful to maintain our cover in the overgrowth. We decided to leave Mike and the gun charging at the Two Mile camp and had even taken a few minutes to aim the gun towards the path we had taken from there to the Daytona camp. If we had to run and they happened to chase, we hoped we could get off a lucky shot. It would have to have divine guidance to score a hit, but at least it was something.

We managed to creep into the Daytona camp and get Bubba and the four wheelers covered. We would do our surveillance on foot as we needed to get close to get good intel. I carried the binoculars and David the spotter scope. We made it to just under half a mile away before deciding any further was too risky.

Our first mission was to conceal our little outpost. We had a good stockpile of camo tarps to draw from as a previous Army Navy store had been located on one of our scavenging travels. Even with the crushed building we were able to dig out all the tarps we could ever want. They had certainly come in handy.

The defeated ship lay still in the water showing tremendous damage. One quarter of the ship was missing after the last great explosion, and a full third of the rest was a burned out hulk. After observing the activity going on around it, we determined that it was nothing more than a salvage operation. The still intact part of the hull was teaming with activity from hundreds of the little helper robots, small freight carriers were occasionally lifting off and heading out towards the other water ship.

The remaining water ship was still hovering in the same position it had been in for the past year. There were still signs of damage and there was still activity from the robots on those sections, but it looked to at least be partially functioning again as far as the mineral extraction went.

The mother ship hovered about a mile above it on the other side. The freighter craft were still lifting off from the remaining water ship towards the larger craft with their stolen cargo.

We would return to Daytona to spy a number of times in the weeks after. Each time the activity was the same, although the activity at the destroyed craft seemed to be winding down.

I had taken the time to check out the substation and our vertical guns. The substation itself had been damaged, but looked to be largely intact, meaning it still had power. The vertical guns had been obliterated by the blowback from their victim.

From the looks of it, and because there had not been any searching for us, I guessed that they had no idea of what had taken place. Maybe they thought it was some type of catastrophic failure as there was no evidence of any warhead or explosive. There was also no evidence of anything but an accident. Our luck to date had been more than we could have ever hoped for.

We returned to our homestead with new plans. With the impressive power that our guns had managed we felt we could make a half scale version that we could place on a swivel base. With faster charging and with the ability to aim we reasoned that it might give us a fighting chance against one or more of the fighters.

Again it took months of work to gather the resources needed. I was getting good at welding and figured that I could build just about anything I needed given the time and materials. As it ended up, we took an old rear axle from a small pickup and mounted our newest gun on it, we called it our howitzer. We could easily tow it behind any of our vehicles and with just a little muscle we could aim it before getting out of the way to fire it.

As part of our battle plans we also made a few remotely controlled decoys. Two were just radios that would start broadcasting when they received a signal and three were smoke bombs that would detonate when triggered. We felt we would need to make use of every trick in the book if we were going to stand even the slightest chance against an assault of any kind. The enemy had defenses while we had few. Our only real defense was that they didn’t know we were there.

One idea I had was that if we built another of the half sized guns as a vertical gun and rigged one of the decoy devices up beside it, we might be able to lure a fighter in and blast it from a remote location. We would get to work immediately on two such weapons after completing the howitzer.

David had also resurrected our original hand held coil gun with a few extra modifications. With power supplied from the grid it could fire a steady stream of tungsten pellets with an energy force of better than a .50 caliber machine gun. We would not be able to hold it for such, but after welding up a nice swivel base in Bubba’s bed, we could put up a modest defense if we had power.

All of our planning and work was exhausting, but the levels of adrenalin created from our initial success kept us working hard and barely sleeping at night. I for one could not wait for another engagement with our nemesis. It took us another four months to bring together our new military equipment. With our weapons complete it was again time for some training. So, off to the Ferrari substation we went.

The overgrowth was now encroaching on the transformers within the chain link fence. I felt it would not be long before Mother Nature would be knocking out our little well of power. It would be too dangerous to practice around the Daytona station.

We hooked up the howitzer first and took several practice shots with it. Again the only way we were able to control such force was with an equal force going out the back.

The half sized weapon was recharged and ready to fire again in less than ten seconds. We had hoped for such and had made an automatic ammo feeder mechanism to go along with it. Our electronics work to date had been outstanding and the auto feeder was no disappointment. About every ten seconds a new round would shoot out in each direction.

Each salvo was accompanied by a loud crack as the speed of sound was breached. And each salvo cut an even deeper swathe through the forest before us as well as the one behind us. The girls had fired every round and I had to say they both loved the power.

After several dozen rounds we switched our attention to the swivel gun mounted on Bubba. I wanted a go of it first. I know David was a little disappointed since it was his baby, but he offered no argument against it.

We connected the power cables and David flipped the fuse into place. We had the auto feeder dialed up and I let a five second burst fly. It was a good thing we had taken the time to really make the swivel mount sturdy as I could feel that the back pressure being generated was immense. With each five second burst I could cut a two foot diameter tree in half.

I was beginning to think we might just have a shot at defending ourselves after all. If we could catch a fighter with its shield defending a different side we could do some real damage to it. I believed the fighter's defense was the concussion shield and I had a gut feeling that it could only be aimed in one direction at a time. The nature of it focusing a wave of energy down to a point would have to leave other parts of the ship vulnerable.

For simultaneous attacks I guessed they would rely on stretching out the point of concussion on a first projectile and then swing it around and focus it closer in for the second. It was pure speculation on my part, but I was willing to take some risks over it. With our day of practice complete we headed home to begin preparations for our next offensive.

We tended the animals as best we could as we were planning to deploy our little army to the field for at least a week. David devised an automatic feeder for the chickens and a new calf would hopefully take care of our milking for us. We had taken one of our old refrigerators and strapped it to one of the trailers.

We would be making our base at Two Mile camp and would be able to power the fridge for our horde of food from there. None of us could wait to get back in the fight with the aliens and I guessed that it was partially because we had not suffered any casualties, as of yet. When and if we did it would be a very bitter pill to swallow.

I loved those three and had not felt like that since being a young boy around my parents. I remember idolizing my father before getting to the age where your friends became far more interesting. It was a feeling of peace and security, and even though I was dealing with three teenagers now, I once again had that feeling. I had not met anyone in all my days that I would rather be going into battle with. All three were loyal, intelligent and seemingly fearless.

The lack of fear is what sometimes makes people into fools. That same lack of fear is also what makes some people heroes. Heroes after all are not born. They are self-made through their actions and deeds. With the three of them having already contributed so much to taking out that first ship, they were all heroes to me.

We left base camp that afternoon to begin our week long spy mission and strategy planning session. We found a good spot for our decoy gun where the fifth gun had taken a lightning hit. We still had the cable laid out to it, so the hookup was relatively easy. We decided to place a radio decoy as well as a smoke decoy with it. If we were lucky we could lure a fighter in and take it down.

We were also able to salvage much of the other cabling we had used in our first offensive. By now the aliens had abandoned the downed ship so we were able to move about the substation freely. We scavenged other power cables from the area and strung out a cable covering nearly three quarters of a mile over to our Daytona camp.

We hooked up Bubba’s machine gun along with our one remaining big gun. The howitzer was placed in a location nearer the substation and the remaining decoys spread out at quarter mile intervals leading away from us.

Our preparations were all in place by the afternoon of the second day. We then began the planning of our second assault. The second water ship had not been over to the substation for recharging, but instead relied on the mother ship to come in close once a month. We had timed our week to coincide with what should have been one of those recharging visits.

We would use the large gun to try to hit the second water ship during its recharge. After that our existence would definitely be known. With some luck we felt we would be able to get off three or four shots at a minimum, before the fighters could reach us. I could only hope that the weapon would be effective at that distance because distance gave them time to react, time to move their shield.

After giving it some thought I decided that I would fire the howitzer at the same time and hopefully be able to draw away the shield and do some damage of my own.

It was once again eagle-eyed Janie who spotted the mother ship descending on its smaller child. There was no doubt that we would be fully exposed. All of our work at building our home, our initial tremendous victory over the first ship, our hard work, and all of our planning were coming to a defined moment.

We had a few hours to kill as the recharging of the water ship from the mother ship also lasted close to a day. I stood looking at the steeled faces of the others as they all watched the mother ship.

The defiance in their eyes was exactly that as recounted in so many war stories over the history of Man. The true heroes stood strong in the face of imminent death, unwavering in their commitment to give it every ounce of energy they had, at whatever the cost.

Their strength in turn steeled my resolve. We had come so far and accomplished so much in our little survivor family. It was now time to stand up for all Mankind and push these brutal murderers back into the blackness of space they had come from. Zero hour was upon us.

I left the camp and made my way over to the howitzer. We had strung a coaxial cable from Daytona camp over to the howitzer so that I could securely communicate with David without giving off a radio signature.

I had put on a copper screened helmet to reduce my signature further, but I still had enough visibility to aim and fire the weapon. I didn’t know if the helmet would actually work, but we were willing to all wear aluminum hats and suck our thumbs if we thought it would help.

David wore a similar screened helmet on his end and manned the large gun. The girls took 30 minute turns manning Bubba’s machine gun with the lucky one going to be at the trigger when it all went down. That day was Rachel’s lucky day. David and I had taken our best aims when I gave the final command. The crack from both weapons was again deafening, but worth the pain.

The big gun and howitzer fired at almost the same instant. As it turned out we were indeed lucky and our velocities were sufficient to bypass their shields. The round from the big gun just missed the smaller ship, but slammed into a propulsion disc on the bottom of the mother ship. The down blast from that hit, blew right into the smaller ship just below.

At the same moment the howitzer round struck the water ship blowing a small hole through the side and a larger one out through the top. The side shot also started the smaller ship into a slow rotation. Neither ship moved position or made any adjustments whatsoever before I fired the howitzer again ten seconds later. This time I hit square in the center of the small ship sending a large plume of smoke, fire and debris upward into the larger ship.

Again ten seconds passed with no reaction from either ship. We had taken them by complete surprise, but we knew we only had a finite amount of time before they would begin doing something about it. I fired the howitzer a third time, this time striking under the water ship and I spotted a plume of debris falling from its other side.

The big gun was ready for another round and David let it fly. It skimmed the top of the smaller ship and again went directly into one of the propulsion discs on the mother ship. Again a back blast of debris came hurdling down upon the smaller ship. The mother ship then dropped slightly and lurched forward towards us.

Because of its immense size it all looked to be happening in slow motion. My next howitzer round then found its mark releasing the same devastating powerful explosion we had seen after taking down the first ship.

Fully one quarter of the water ship was instantly incinerated with the damage reaching up to the bottom of the larger one. The debris then did our work for us as it knocked out another propulsion disc on the mother ship.

The resulting drop and lurch forward of the mother ship was all it took to end the existence of the smaller vessel. The five mile wide behemoth dipped down enough to crash into the now severally damaged water ship. The impact flattened a large portion of the smaller craft and sent it crashing downward into the ocean.

Again I fired another round into the mother ship. This time the shot seemed to be absorbed by the larger ship, no doubt doing tremendous internal damage. At that point the fighters finally began to emerge. I counted 15 of them. And with the chaotic pattern they fell into I could only guess that they still had no idea where they were being attacked from.

Our rounds must have been too small and must have been coming in too fast for them to get a fix on us. David then let off another round, striking the far underside of the great ship and damaging two more of the propulsion discs. The fighters then locked onto the tungsten projectile coming out the back of David’s gun. The destruction it caused behind us had given away our position.

The mother ship had a total of 16 discs on its underbelly and we had managed to take out a number of them. Unfortunately, with our last rounds origin detected, we had less than a minute before fighters would be swarming us. A half dozen of the fighters came straight in and I was ready for the first one.

The howitzer round punched a small hole in the front of it and blew all the guts out of the back. The empty shell of the fighter flipped over and crashed down in the water before ever making it to the shore. I could just make out by the distortions in the air in front of the fighters that they now all had their shields on and facing towards us.

My next round missed, but I had a large backup target behind it. Once again the mother ship absorbed my howitzer round with untold internal damage being done. The next fighter in was headed directly for David. He waited patiently for it to come into his firing line before letting go. With its shields already in front the fighter did not appear to take any damage. But the shock of the force was enough to knock the fighter from the sky. It plummeted downward, skipped once on the waves and come to rest on the beach.

My next round would not be ready for the following fighter bearing down on me. So, I triggered the first decoy and waited. The fighter shifted is shield down as a concussion weapon and began blasting the ground directly below it as it flew. I lucked out in that it went to my side on its way over to the decoy.

My timing on firing the vertical gun at the decoy was perfect. I blew the nose of the fighter clean off and it spun violently as it turned back out over the beach before crashing into the ocean. Two other fighters turned back, probably in an attempt to protect the mother ship while one last fighter approached David.

This time Rachel had the machine gun ready and David set off one of the decoys. The fighter turned towards the decoy and began thrashing the ground under it with its concussion weapon.

Rachel let loose a five second stream from the machine gun, but the fighter shifted its shield and effectively blocked the incoming barrage from the weaker weapon. David then set off another decoy. The fighter flew over the second decoy obliterating it and again turned back towards Rachel. As the fighter approached with its shield up Janie had planned a distraction of her own.

Since our encounter with the looters Janie had taken all the practice she could with her thirty-eight. She had planned her little ambush and had opened up from a hundred yards to Rachel's side as the fighter approached. For only a moment the fighter turned its shields towards her, but it was long enough for Rachel to once again cut loose.

The ensuing stream of tungsten pellets sawed the fighter in half. The two halves flew just over David and Rachel’s heads spewing debris before crashing into the ground just beyond their position.

I again turned my howitzer on the mother ship. Every ten seconds I fired a new round into it and every ten seconds it seemingly absorbed it. It didn’t take long before I realized that David was no longer responding or firing his weapon.

I couldn’t give up on my side so I just kept firing again and again. Another minute passed before the mother ship finally began its assent towards safety with its remaining ten fighters following its retreat.

I fired twice more at the retreating ship before flinging off my helmet and running towards David and the girls. I was desperate with fear as all I had been able to see was a fighter crashing in their direction. As I got closer the flames and smoke put a wall between me and my family. My heart raced as I ran.

After working my way around the blaze I was able to see Bubba, but David and Rachel were not in sight. Small fires were burning all around from the debris that had fallen from the cut-in-half fighter.

I called out but got no reply. I called second time and heard David at a distance. Another call and response and I was again running towards him. As I got closer I could see David bent over Janie and Rachel was crying with her fists clinched and covering her mouth. Again the goose bumps came up on my arms as the fear of loss crept into my heart.

When I reached them David had teared up as well. I knelt over Janie and gently picked up her head. Her right arm lay in a pool of blood and she had blood on her forehead and neck. A metal shard was sticking from her arm.

I tore off my shirt and ripped it into a bandage. It took all of my courage to pull the shard from her arm. Blood was everywhere. I bound the wound tightly and had David keep pressure on it. She had a small cut on her forehead that had caused the bleeding there and after quick inspection I could find no other wounds.

I cradled her in my arms and carried her back to Bubba as David kept pressure on her arm. Rachel had gone ahead of us and had our small medical kit out on Bubba’s tailgate. I lay Janie down gently and began removing the shirt bandage.

Rachel began cleaning up her head wound while David attempted to keep pressure on her arm. I could do crude stitches on the surface, but if she had an internal bleeder we would not be able to stop it.

I had David pinch the wound together to keep the bleeding to a minimum as I began stitching her up. My extent of putting in stitches had been taking a few drunken shots at stitching up pig carcasses back in college. My stitch-work was good at the time, but it had been many years since I had even thought of it. As my unsteady hands shook, I began to stitch Janie up. I was done with my butchery in five minutes. The stitches seemed to be doing their job of holding her together, but she had lost a lot of blood and none of us were really sure of what to do next.

The mother ship had pulled back to its 30 mile range, no doubt attempting to tend to its own wounds. The crashing fighter had severed the power to the big gun and Bubba’s machine gun so our Daytona camp was now inoperative. Rachel tended to Janie as David and I broke camp. We quickly began making our way back to Two Mile camp.

It was getting dark so we would rest there overnight before heading home. Back at the bunker was where we could best attempt to care for Janie. With the mother ship damaged and at a distance and with our medical emergency we decided to leave the big guns in place. With luck we would be back to recover them soon enough, but at that time all of our thoughts were on Janie.