The doors blew open.
“Hold your positions! No retreat, no surrender! We aren’t going down without a fight they’ll remember!”
His supply of bad war movie cliches exhausted, West readied himself for the attack. What were these creatures?
A dull ache was starting to form at the back of West’s head. He checked his weapon and was disturbed to see that his eyes would not focus properly.
He blinked and shook his head. It was as if some terribly powerful force was trying to pry its way into his mind…Tangible, maddening.
West and the other soldiers crouched behind a crumbled wall. They came from many different backgrounds: career military, civilian militia, and other men and women who just owned a gun and wanted to live. One thing united them: they all had the look of a trapped animal.
He could hear, feel the approach of the Enemy forces.
They would draw the line here.
With eyes that blazed cold gray light, he jumped over the wall, his automatic rifle blazing armor-piercing rounds into the Enemy midst.
It began.
Soldiers poured into the church.
“Everyone get down! They’re coming! Get down!!”
The soldiers took up defensive positions and trained their weapons on the entrance. The faithful prayed; the fearful wept. The soldiers waited.
The light outside the door dimmed.
The preacher continued with the sermon, shouting to make his voice heard over the roar of nothingness from without.
“I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him…”
The building shook.
“…the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth…”
Wails of grief.
“And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondsman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?”
The Enemy swept into the church.
The old gods did nothing to protect their flock.
The faithful were judged.
Nightmares.
She was trapped in their power. Her dreams always haunted her, bringing up memories of a past she still struggled to forget.
But she was a Styx.
Memories.
She snapped upright from where she had been sleeping and stifled the urge to scream. Her breath came hard, fast; she was bathed in sweat.
Vertigo. Where am I?
Then she heard the weeping and the moaning of the wounded. A child cried out for his mother, began to sob. Other voices joined it in abject despair. She saw the dim glow of the chemlites.
She was still in the tunnel.
Someone was there.
She sensed someone staring at her from the darkness. She tried to speak, but her voice was still a harsh whisper. There had been chemical warfare on the surface.
She found her flashlight and turned it on to see who was watching her. Time was distorted in the tunnel, but she sensed that it was nighttime on the surface. Most of the refugees in the tunnel slept.
The medic sat watching her from the shadows.
“I’m sorry…Did I wake you?”
She shook her head, looked at him questioningly.
“Good. I brought a biotic for your throat.”
He came closer and sat down next to her against the wall. Someone screamed; whether in sleep or in the waking state she could not tell.
“Open up.” She obeyed, and he activated the biotic field, sweeping the back of her throat. She gasped as the human-engineered biological organisms attacked the infection.
“Don’t fight it. It’ll burn for a while, but you’ll be better in a few minutes.”
She smiled and looked down at his name tag. Hayes.
He noticed her gaze. “Simon Hayes. Chief Medical Officer of the Fourteenth Assault. Born and raised in Harkness, Michigan.”
Her eyes widened. He smiled, looked sadly down the length of the tunnel.
“Yes. That Harkness, Michigan. The one that went ‘boom.’”
She placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Let’s see if the biotics have done their job yet. Try to say something, but don’t force it. Start out by telling me your name.”
“Flynn…”
“Good start. What Flynn, if I may be so bold?”
“Ember Magdalene Flynn.” Her throat was on fire, but even in its strangely cracked timbre, her brogue shined through enough to make Hayes smile with surprise.
“And where are you from, Ms. Flynn? Brooklyn?”
She laughed, for the first time in… in a long time. A very long time.
“My friends call me Maggie. I come from New Belfast.”
“Oh, I couldn’t tell.” His smile was the brightest thing she could see in the expanse of the tunnel. He was of course being sarcastic. “What brings you to Seattle, Ms. Flynn? The lovely scenery, the accommodations, the shopping and sightseeing? Are you into grunge, Cobain, coffeehouses, drummers and guitarists with scruffy goatees? That sort of thing?”
She tapped the Milicom identification burn on her forearm. “I heard there was a little fight going on, and I figured I could help out.”
“Ah, beloved Milicom Systems International. You were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, Ms. Flynn. You would have been safer back at home, probably.”
“I haven’t been home in twelve years. With the troubles in Quebec and all… I joined up to fight in that war; I’ve been stationed in the ASA ever since the annexation. I guess this is my home now, so I’m fighting again to save it.”
Hayes uttered a pained laugh. “Not much worth saving anymore. America the beautiful. Loyalty, freedom, individuality. Greed, corruption, an insatiable desire to achieve globalized manifest destiny. All the things our fathers died for in War Three. You are one of a dying breed, Ms. Flynn.” His smile reassured her that he was being sarcastic, but she could tell that he was being genuine.
“Has there been any word from above?”
Hayes looked down and studied the chemlite; the gentle smile disappeared from his face. “The messages
