CHAPTER TWENTY
Tears
Alex struggled to open his right eye. He struggled to open both of them in point fact, but at this moment he was concerned with just getting the right one open. It felt as if it was glued shut, as if a small bag of sand was pressing down on it. He strained, mentally and physically, fighting against the profound fatigue that had set in across his entire body. He began to become aware of his physical self again, little by little, tingling sensations throughout making him aware that he was regaining consciousness.
Finally, that damned stubborn right eye cracked open just a little bit, met by the searing brightness of an overhead lamp. His eye instinctively shut closed once more, and he had to repeat the exercise about half a dozen times before it finally acclimated enough to the light to stay open. He didn’t even notice that his left eye had joined the right about half-way through this series of half-opens and closings.
“Captain, can you hear me?”
Alex thought he recognized the voice, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Captain, I’m doctor Sefkin. Do you know where you are?”
Alex looked around as best he could, but his head was still sluggish, still not moving as it should. He could make out enough detail, however, to figure out where he was. To his surprise, his mouth seemed to be working more or less normally, though the exhaustion he felt still made talking a slow and arduous process.
“Outside… the cabin, upstate… New York”
“That’s right Captain. Do you remember what happened?”
That question made Alex clench his eyes closed tightly as the images of the battle flashed through his minds’ eye. Violence, death and gore exploded onto the theater in his head as he replayed the horror again just as vividly as when it had happened for real. It took a few moments, and a big mental push, for him to regain control and shove those images away, hidden in some dark corner of his mind where he hoped they would never be found.
“Yes.”
The tone of his voice, the obvious pain, and despair, was all doctor Sefkin needed to hear.
“I’m sorry, Captain. The scene in there is… it’s… horrible. I can only imagine how traumatic it was to live through it. But, Captain, you did live through it. You survived, and I think right now that’s what you need to be focused on.”
Alex was now trying to sit up, fighting what felt like weights laying all over his body.
“Take it easy Captain, don’t overdo it. You’ve been through a massive trauma, and your body needs time to rest.”
“Wait, doctor, what are you even doing here?”
“Major Alcheck came when you couldn’t be reached on coms for over two hours. It took us a while to get here. You’ve been out of it for about five hours now, but I think you’re going to be okay. You just need some rest.”
Five hours? On top of two since they went radio silent? That meant the Xe’Tara warrior had a seven-hour head start on him!
Alex began to try and get out of the gurney he was on in the makeshift medical tent, over the doctor’s protests.
“Captain, please! You really can’t get up yet, we still have tests we need to run to assess if there’s been any permanent damage.”
“Pardon me doctor but fuck that shit! We’ve got to get moving like yesterday!”
Alex tried to stand, but his legs didn’t obey the commands his brain was sending, and he collapsed to the floor in a heap as doctor Sefkin tried to catch him, without success. He crumbled to the ground in a heap. He began picking himself up, trying to use his arms more than his legs now, as Sefkin grabbed him to help.
It was at this moment that Major Alcheck walked through the flap of the tent, having heard the commotion.
“Captain, I’m glad to see you back on your feet, or at least trying to be, but am I really going to have to order you to stay in bed?” Alcheck was trying to sound commanding and comforting at the same time. Unsuccessfully.
“Major! There’s no time for rest! It knows Major, it KNOWS!” Alex managed now to get to a semi-standing position, still wobbly, but at least not falling over now as he finally lifted his hands off the ground and willed his legs to, more or less, work once again.
“Knows what? Who knows what, Alex?”
“The Xe’Tara warrior. It’s still alive Major, and it knows where the X-100 is.”
“How could it know that, Alex?” A hint of sternness crept into Alcheck’s voice, probably more than he actually intended. It was slightly accusatory, though Alex knew that wasn’t how he meant it. Probably.
“I’m not sure Major. Something happened in there, during the battle.” Alex looked through the small plastic window in the side of the tent, saw the cabin, and the images flashed across his mind’s eye again. This time though, his training proved sufficient to immediately silence that mental noise and stay on point.
“I don’t know what happened, I just know that somehow, that thing was able to pull information from me. It knows where we moved the thing to and it’s headed there, if it’s not there already.”
Major Alcheck was quickly beginning the grasp the severity of the situation.
“Well, it can’t have arrived yet, or I would have heard about it by now.”
“Unless everyone at the base is dead already, Brendan.” The cold tone in Alex’s voice as he uttered the words shocked even him, but he knew the statement might be all too accurate.
And Alcheck very much understood the carnage that had been done in the cabin, having seen the results. That, coupled with his knowledge of Alex and how he wouldn’t say something like that unless it were a distinct possibility, caused his blood to run cold as he reached for the field phone clipped to his belt.
“Sergeant! Contact Northern Lights and get a sit-rep, immediately!”
The squawk of the radio broke the momentary silence that had descended on everyone in the tent as Sergeant Williams replied: “Yes, sir, right away sir!”
Seconds past, then half a minute, as the tension in the room grew at an exponential rate with each passing moment. It was finally Doctor Sefkin who broke the silence.
“Well, if you’re not going to let me run further tests you can at least have a seat and let me check your vitals, all right Captain?”
Alex looked at him for a moment and considered his options. They were of equal rank so he couldn’t order him to shut his mouth, and he suspected Alcheck would just overrule him anyway. It didn’t take long for him to realize that acquiescence was his best course of action.
“Fine doc, have it your way.” Alex lifted himself back up onto the gurney. His strength was returning more rapidly than he thought it was going to at first, probably thanks to the jolt of adrenaline he was feeling waiting for the report back.
What exactly was taking so long anyway? Alex wondered as he sat on the gurney, Doctor Sefkin beginning to put a blood pressure collar around his arm. Before he could begin tightening the cuff, the radio sprang to life.
“Major, Northern Lights reports all normal on base. No security alerts of any kind, all systems nominal. They even report the weather is pretty nice at the moment, sir. Is there something specific you would like a more detailed report on, sir?”
The crinkles in Major Alcheck’s face that had formed over the last fifteen seconds or so of impatiently waiting for the response began to smooth over as the tension left his face. “No, Sergeant, that will be all.”
“Yes, sir!” came the reply over the radio, a final squawk bookending the conversation.
“Ok, so it hasn’t gotten there yet, we know that much.”
“Right. But that worries me.”
“Worries you? Why would that worry you, Alex?”
“Because it was in really bad shape when it left here. But you saw what it was able to do in that condition. So, there are two possibilities now. Either that thing is taking longer to reach the base than I would have expected…”
Major Alcheck interrupted.
“Alex, it’s not like it could steal a car and drive across the border without drawing a ton of attention. It must be on foot. It’s only been about seven hours, that’s just not enough time for it to travel that far, super-space warrior or not.”
“Well, I’m not so sure about that. Something in my gut says that thing can move on foot a hell of a lot faster than we’d believe if we saw it. I suspect seven hours would be enough time for it to get that far, even in the damaged state it was in when it left here.”
“You can’t know that though Alex, there’s no way you could.”
“Actually, I get the distinct impression that I can know that.”
“You’re going to have to explain that one to me, Alex. Is it more information you got from the probe?”
“I… I guess I’m not really sure, but I don’t think so. I think there’s something else going on now, something I can’t quite explain.”
Major Alcheck began to open his mouth to speak, but before he could, Alex continued, a solemn look etched in his eyes, so solemn that Alcheck immediately noticed it and instinctively closed his mouth to let Alex continue.
“Not knowing isn’t what worries me now anyway. What worries me is the second of the two possibilities I mentioned…”
Alex trailed off as if lost in thought. After a few seconds, Doctor Reskin prompted him, having stopped checking Alex’s blood pressure, mesmerized by what he was saying.
“Alex, what’s the second possibility?”
Alex returned to the moment, quickly looked at the doctor, then at Major Alcheck.
“The second possibility is that it’s biding its time, regaining its full strength, in preparation for one final assault that there’s probably no way we can stop.”
——————————
Alex stared at the door for what seemed like an eternity. His hand, bandaged tightly with a smattering of blood beginning to seep through, clutched the doorknob. All he had to do was turn it, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to. He knew what lay behind the door and it scared him more than the Xe’Tara warrior he knew he’d have to face again very soon.
He glanced again at the mailbox affixed to the wall next to the door. The number 1021 stood out, its bright yellow lettering highly visible from the street behind him. And right below the number, in a sickly green color that he had always hated, was two simple words:
The Wakemans.
The wind blew through his dirty hair, a cold breeze that chilled him to the bone, though he knew he’d feel a deep chill right now even without the wind. He had to go in. He knew he had to, but finding the strength to do so was proving harder than he had imagined.
Amazing how some things can turn even the bravest men into cowards he thought to himself.
As if on cue, a welcome distraction invaded his mind as he thought back to the conversation with Alcheck just a short time ago.
“It’s going to be our last stand, Brendan. We’ve got to get to the base in Canada before that thing does and we’ve got to be ready for it.”
“But Captain… no, you know what? Enough with the ranks for a while Alex. With what we’ve been through and what we still have to face let’s forget we’re military men for a little while. We’re just friends for today, all right Alex? After all, we could very well both be dead before long here. I think that’s worthy of dispensing with military formality for.”
In addition to his softened tone, there was a palpable physical softening of Alcheck’s face too. This was as unguarded as Alex had ever seen him.
“Alex, if that thing actually is gaining strength like you think, it could be at full strength by the time it reaches the base. In fact, assuming it thinks tactically like we do then it’s probably waiting exactly for that before attacking. We could barely handle it when it was, what, a newborn I guess we’d call it? And you could even argue we, in fact, didn’t handle it! And what it did to your team in that cabin when you had every advantage you could hope for… how are we going to handle this thing?”
“Well, I’ve got some ideas about that. There’s some stuff sloshing around in my head, stuff I can barely describe and can understand even less, but something is gnawing at my gut saying that it’s important, that it can help. I’m hoping that by the time we reach the base I’ll have some kind of handle on it.”
“Well, I hope so too Alex. But either way, we’ll do what we do. We’ll get our defenses set up and fight to the last man. I’ve already radioed instructions up there, and preparations began a few hours ago. I’ve also got some favors to call in on the way. We’ll have a force ready to face that thing that, with any luck, will be enough to overwhelm it if by virtue of nothing but sheer numbers. By the time we arrive, we should be pretty close to as ready as we can be.”
“Excellent, Brendan. But, I’ve got to make a pitstop before we head out.”
Tom was perplexed, and his face showed it.
“Pitstop? Where could you possibly need to go before Canada?”
Alex leaned forward and rested his forehead on the door of his and Melissa’s Pennsylvania home as his mind snapped back to the present. It was time to stop procrastinating, time to fight through the pain of memory.
He turned the knob and pushed the door open and stepped through the door as a sudden rush of emotion washed over him as if someone had dropped a cooler of water over him.
As he entered the mud room, he saw Melissa’s 10-speed bicycle first. She rode that bike to the store every Tuesday and Friday to get fresh vegetables. Alex had replaced the chain for her just two weeks ago.
As he walked through the mudroom, the kitchen opened up before him. Pots and cooking tools hung from the ceiling on those special hooks Melissa had made him buy and install for her. She fancied herself quite the professional chef, and she had been teaching herself a lot over the last year or two. Alex’s waistline was all the proof she needed that she was on the right track!
On the refrigerator were pictures from their last two vacations: Disney World this past spring and Nashville last summer. They rarely went on vacations that he chose, but Alex was always okay with that because Melissa’s choices made her happy, and that made Alex happy. Although they had been to Disney World a few times and always enjoyed it, the trip to Nashville especially was a special memory for him because she was a big country music fan and had wanted to visit the “official home of country music," as she called it. They had driven there, even though flying would have been cheaper and faster. Melissa wasn’t a fan of long drives, but he was, because it gave them time together and chances to experience the country and all the unexpected things they found along the way.
He turned away from the refrigerator to his right and walked through the archway that separated the kitchen from the living room.
Nature paintings adorned the walls, something he had always enjoyed. Melissa didn’t really love them, but she knew they made Alex happy, so she had always been supportive. A few family pictures were interspersed between the paintings, some of Alex and Melissa together, a few of their families, his parents and hers. A few spaces were strategically left as well, earmarked for the pictures of the children that they never had, and now would never, be able to have together. They had talked about having kids many times, and they were both looking forward to being parents tremendously, but they were waiting just a little longer. They figured they couldn’t well become parents when Alex’s job was so risky, and Melissa was so consumed by her work. They had begun talking about retirement just a few weeks ago though, the itch to start their own family finally needing to be scratched.
Alex’s eyes welled up with tears as he stared at one of those blank areas. He had been very much looking forward to being a father. But that wouldn’t happen now, certainly not with Melissa. And given what was waiting for him in Canada, he didn’t imagine he’d ever have the chance with anyone else, even though he couldn’t comprehend the notion of someone else at that moment anyway. The thought was as alien as the creature he would soon be fighting again.
He wiped the tears from his eyes and walked across the living room and to the door that led to the basement. He opened it, pulled the chain for the light above the stairs and made his way down. At the bottom, he flipped the light switch, and the fluorescent bulbs across the basement flickered to life, slowly. He never did get around to changing the starters like Melissa had asked. It wasn’t that he forgot, it’s that, as he said: “You’re the super-smart scientist person here, I think you could change a starter yourself!” He always said it in a joking way of course, and Melissa knew it, but now it stung for some reason, as if he had somehow let her down. He intellectually knew that wasn’t the case, but intellect gave way to emotion now, never actually standing a chance.
The basement was largely his domain, and it was a typical man-dominated basement: lots of tools, a workbench, a pool table, a tacky calendar with some scantily-clad women over old cars, and a rack of swords and knives. Alex collected these, more for aesthetic purposes than anything else, though he was quite proficient with bladed weapons as well.
Beside the rack was a safe, a colossal safe, taller than Alex and about twice as wide. This safe weighed well over 1,000 pounds and almost double that when you factored in the weight of its contents: his gun collection.
All sorts of firearms were present as Alex opened the safe, the movements of its giant spinner wheel so silky smooth thanks to Alex’s obsessive oiling of it, meeting his gaze. Many of these guns had been passed down to him when his father died, a few stretching back some generations before that. But many were Alex’s own purchases, guns he liked for various reasons. There was the P-90, his favorite “space gun," it’s unusual form looking like something out of a science fiction movie. The same was true of his FS-2000, though it shot the same ammo as any of the four plain old AR-15’s he had. A Mosin Nagant was one of his favorites for long-distance shots, the World War II-era gun packing a good punch from a distance while being extremely accurate even after all these years. Almost a dozen pistols of various types were there, all guns that he enjoyed shooting, as did Melissa on occasion.
Melissa had been fiercely anti-gun when they got married, but over time she wanted to share in Alex’s hobby, and so he had taken her to the shooting range a few years ago. Her outlook changed that day when she realized that shooting could actually be quite fun. She had gained an appreciation for the shooting sports that Alex enjoyed and while it wasn’t frequent, the times they ventured out to the range together were always a joy to him.
He closed the door to the safe and spun the wheel, locking it. As much as this collection meant to him, he knew there was a good chance he’d never see it again. He certainly didn’t want to leave it open and easily accessible for whoever found their way into the house if he was never to return. It could be some kids, and that was something he couldn’t allow.
Alex had one more stop to make, and he knew it would be the hardest. He turned off the lights in the basement, made his way back upstairs, and stood at the base of the stairs leading up to the second floor of the house.
The second floor, where his and Melissa’s bedroom was.
He willed himself up the stairs, and he entered the bedroom. It was almost too much.
A pile of Melissa’s clothes was stacked on the dresser, folded neatly, and awaiting being put away. Her scent emanated from them and met his nose, and he gasped. That smell always drove him crazy, and it felt a thousand times stronger now somehow in her absence.
In the far corner of the room was the sight he simultaneously was looking the most forward to and simultaneously dreading the most. On a metal rack, hanging with plastic form rods through it, was Melissa’s wedding dress.
She had recently sent it out to be restored. It had suffered some damage from leaking water from the roof. Melissa very much wanted it to be in tip-top condition so that her daughter, should she have one, could use it someday.
Alex looked at it, and his mind flashed back to their wedding and how beautiful Melissa was. She was always beautiful in his eyes of course, but that day she looked like a princess out of a Disney movie. When he saw her coming down the aisle, he couldn’t believe he had managed such a catch!
Alex closed his eyes, fighting back the tears. He would never again see her smiling face in the morning, or watch her as she furrowed her brow in concentration at preparing a new, complicated dish in the kitchen. He would never again see her smile as she looked at one of the blank spaces on the wall in the living room, lost in thoughts about the picture of their children that would go there before too long. He’d never watch her toned legs from the window as she rode her bike to the market every Tuesday and Friday and he’d never feel the connection with her that he felt at the shooting range.
She was gone, and it hurt. It would never stop hurting, he knew.
Alex opened his eyes now as he pushed the emotions away, pushed them back into the far recess of his mind. There might someday be a time to take them out again, and he would do so because the pain was accompanied by memories of joy and happiness and he was perfectly willing to endure the one to feel the other again.
But not today.
A wave of stone-cold determination replaced everything else, and a stoic look etched itself upon his face as if chiseled into the stone expression of a statue.
It was time to go to work. And it was time for a good measure of revenge. Not just for Melissa now, but for the team that had been cut down under his command.
Alex raced down the stairs, through the kitchen, out the mud room and he slammed the front door behind him as he ran down the driveway into the jeep waiting for him at the end. He didn’t look back, not even for a second, and he didn’t take anything with him. There was no need. Everything he needed was in his head, and in his heart. If he never returned to this place again, he carried with him the best pieces of it, and the best pieces of Melissa.
It was time to go to work, one last time.
——————————
The troop transport carrier approached the gate of the base as Alex re-checked his M-X for the fifth time. It was functioning exactly as expected, exactly as it had the previous four times. The re-inserted the full plasma reservoir, slapped it into place and flipped the power switch to the off position.
Something in his brain prodded him like a hot poker in response to that thought. It took him a moment to realize why but when he did he couldn’t help but chuckle to himself: this rifle, this wonder of modern warfare armament that he knew that he could defeat an entire platoon of enemy soldiers with, would do him no good whatsoever against the enemy he was preparing to face. No weapon he knew of would.
Alex dropped the M-X onto the bench next to him and looked at his empty hands. “What the hell are we going to do?” he said to himself. He was glad no one else was in the transport aside from the driver in the forward compartment, and he couldn’t hear Alex’s depressing words.
As if in response, something appeared in his hands! Something ghostly, not a physical thing but more of a shadow of a thing. It startled him and sent him to his feet, still staring at his hands. Just the outline of the thing remained, like a hologram he could barely perceive. He blinked a couple of times in rapid succession and each time he did the image dimmed a little bit and eventually vanished, leaving just his empty hands.
Alex wondered if he was cracking up – it would be a hell of a time for that to happen is so – but somehow, he didn’t think that was it. But, he couldn’t explain what had just happened either.
“Aliens, probes, invisible unbeatable creatures, why the hell am I surprised?”
And again, he was happy no one could hear him.
The transport passed through the gate as the driver announced their arrival in a loud yell over the engine of the transport: “We’re here, Captain! We’ll be at the main entrance in about two minutes.”
“Very good, Sergeant, thank you.”
“Not a problem sir, thank you for traveling the friendly skies… err, road!”
Alex smiled. He was glad the driver could joke. He just wished it wasn’t because he had no clue what they were driving into.
The smiled melted away from his face like ice on a hot day.
——————————
“Captain, glad you could make it. Everything taken care of?”
“Yes, sir, all taken care of. How goes preparations up here, Major?”
“Very good!” Alcheck actually looked proud, Alex noted. “Have a look for yourself.”
Alex quickly understood why he looked proud. As he walked through the corridor that opened up into the hangar bay where the X-100 was, he saw what he guesstimated to be around 150 men. Alcheck had really outdone himself! He’d have to remember to find out how he got so many soldiers here so quickly. This particular base only had about 50 people on it at any given time, and most of them were support staff, just a handful of security personnel. So, to be able to get 100 more, and what he judged to be real combat troops at that, was a remarkable and impressive feat.
Aside from the men, Alex saw that they had been very busy building a solid perimeter out of cinder blocks around the X-100. There were gun ports in the makeshift wall where he could see M-60 machine guns. As he walked around the wall inspecting, he counted four on each side, plus assorted other gun ports for the soldiers to fire through. The wall had been cemented together and appeared to be quite strong (confirmed by him kicking it a few times as hard as he could). There was enough room inside for about 50 men he guessed, in addition to the X-100. There would be the final line of defense with the bulk of the forces outside. Surrounding the wall was essentially another wall, this one built out of heavy sandbags. While the inner wall he thought might give the Xe’Tara warrior some problems, he knew the sandbags would barely slow it down no matter how heavy they appeared to be. But, if it slowed it down just a little then that might be all the extra time the men outside would need to kill it.
But he doubted it.
What might slow it down a bit more though were the claymore mines surrounding the outer wall of sandbags. They were arranged in such a way that there was only one safe passage through what was essentially a directed minefield. If they were lucky, it would trip the mines and take itself out. The strategy, he instantly recognized, was taking a page out of the Spartans’ playbook. The battle of Thermopylae was made famous by the movie 300, and while the movie was of course highly stylized and dramatized to make a piece of entert