Zombies versus Aliens versus Vampires versus Dinosaurs Page 3

  “Ray, it’s our job to report these kind of findings.”

  “No, it’s your job to do what I tell you. It’s my job to keep this place running. And right now it’s the President’s priority to get his budget through Congress.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?

  “Addison’s going to compromise to get what he wants, he always does. Right now we fly under the radar, but if we go public with this alien nonsense, we’ll be the butt of every late-night comic’s joke. It’s just begging Congress to slash our funds. No more manned mission to Mars, no exploration of Jupiter’s moons. It will be the end of the advancement of mankind for a generation.”

  “The American public will eat this stuff up,” Jean-Francois pleaded.

  “Some will, others will kill us with it,” Raymond said as he stood up and headed to the door. “You guys want to go public with an alien, get me an alien. Till then, the only aliens the President wants to hear about are Mexicans.”

  And he was gone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The jeep was less than a mile from the Fort Brooks Army Base as the two MPs drove their prisoner along the South Dakota dirt road. At the wheel was Staff Sergeant Harve Sedar, a true patriot who just happened to have turned eighteen on September 11, 2001. The Kentucky boy had taken the attack as a personal insult and went to enlist that very day, but everything was closed. He enlisted the day after.

  Eleven years and four stints in Iraq and Afghanistan after that, the buff six-foot-two man was redeployed home and resolved to make the Army his life. He saw no better way to find purpose and meaning, no better way to serve his country and his God. When he learned of a shortage within Army law enforcement, he requested Military Police as his new specialty because his other best career option—drill sergeant—seemed no option at all.

  Harve knew that most of the young boys and girls he would train would be deployed somewhere, someday, and most of them wouldn’t come back—not in one piece anyway. He himself had had no problem killing enemy combatants, and he respected the heck out of the fine men and women by his side who had died for their country—but the notion of looking fresh-faced young recruits in the eye every morning as he prepared them for their end was simply too much for him to stomach.

  It was the right choice. Harve took to his new assignment like a fish to water. The Army couldn’t function without rules, he knew, and those who broke them had to be removed or the whole system would break down. He was protecting the military from collapse, and the local townspeople from the military’s bad seeds. Barely a day went by that he didn’t feel content with the life he had chosen.

  Today was not one of those days.

  “Come on,” cajoled the boyishly handsome, handcuffed prisoner in the backseat as if Harve’s best bud. “One grunt to another, lemme go. No one’ll be the wiser.”

  “It’s not our call, Private,” Harve began with no emotion attached. “You broke the law. You’ll stand trial.”

  “I didn’t though.”

  “You were AWOL.”

  “I just lost track of time,” the prisoner said a little too glibly for Harve’s taste. Perhaps the soldier was too dumb to realize the severity of his situation, or perhaps he really just didn’t care. Either way, his smart-ass attitude combined with his disheveled uniform and longer-than-regulation hair was causing Harve to develop a serious dislike for the man.

  The truth was that the prisoner didn’t care—but he had good reason.

  Johnny Kester once cared about things—cared about the same things as Harve and just as strongly, minus the Jesus part. The Southern Californian boy had served his tours in the Middle East with the same degree of pride and patriotism as his current jailer. Then the incident happened, and everything changed.

  What Johnny had done was unforgiveable, he knew that—but how the Army handled it afterward was even worse. So if he couldn’t forgive himself, he certainly would never forgive them. On the other hand, they could never touch him.

  On the other other hand, he could never get out.

  All that was left for him to do was enjoy himself.

  Which he did in droves.

  And given that he was handcuffed in the backseat of a jeep on the way to a court martial that would never happen, getting under the skin of a fanatically religious, gung ho G.I. Joe seemed as fun a way as any to pass the hours.

  “Lost track of time? My hot patootie!” Harve said in response to his prisoner’s lame excuse. “You were in a bar fight!”

  “The guy came at me,” Johnny answered innocently.

  “Because you’d been messing around with his wife!”

  “She was hot and she liked me. What was I gonna do, not mess around with her?”

  The MP in the passenger seat laughed. “This guy’s hysterical.”

  Corporal Frank Hatteras had met Harve on their first tour in Iraq, and they had remained brothers-in-arms ever since. He was a gangly, goofy-looking guy with bad teeth and not too much upstairs, but Harve had learned long ago that there’s more to a man than smarts. Frank was brave, loyal, a crack shot and a fine soldier, and that was all that mattered.

  Still, he couldn’t let the prisoner’s wrongful attitude be encouraged.

  “He is not hysterical,” Harve replied coldly. “He is a disgrace to his uniform.”

  “I can be both,” Johnny said with a friendly smile.

  Frank laughed again. “I’m telling you, Sarge, the guy’s a crack-up.”

  Harve barely grunted, and Johnny could tell which one of them was calling the shots. But he also knew something they didn’t.

  “Fine, bring me in,” he told them. “They won’t do anything to me anyway.”

  “I dunno, buddy,” began Frank. “AWOL’s pretty serious.”

  “Ten bucks says I don’t spend one night in that base’s holding cell.”

  “You’re gambling on your own liberty?” Harve countered with a fury. “What the heck is wrong with you?!”

  “Easy, Sarge,” cautioned Frank. “If the man wants to give us his money, who are we to stop him?” Then he turned back to the prisoner and said, “You got a bet.”

  “Ten bucks,” Johnny spelled it out. “Not one single night in that base’s holding cell.”

  BOOM!

  The military base a half mile ahead suddenly exploded in giant bursts of fire, the force of which thrust the jeep back and into the air, flipping over and crashing onto its roof on the road’s edge.

  The Army barracks and the other wooden buildings on the base ignited in flames with the wrath of hellfire. The buildings of brick shattered to rubble. Tanks and metal structures melted to liquid goo. Every building, man, woman and child, all of it, the equivalent of a small town ablaze in giant balls of death until nothing existed at all but a sprawling expanse of desolate land.

  And at that very same moment, at every military installation in every corner of the world and beyond, identical destruction was taking hold.

  Giant bases and airfields, fighter jets and rockets, battle cruisers and aircraft carriers, space stations and satellites, weapons bunkers and munitions factories both military and civilian, all suddenly exploded in simultaneous violent flame. Submarines underwater burned impossibly. Underground nuclear silos and the atomic missiles they contained disintegrated into a sandy nothingness. Scores of hundreds of millions of men, women and children died in an instant. Iran, England, Pakistan, Israel, Russia, China, Korea North and South, enemies and allies alike. Everyone! Everything!

  The entire military capability of our planet was gone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The news of the planetary destruction had not yet reached the White House. Although late morning, Laurel was still asleep in her bed in the East Wing, Saturday night’s vampire battle having taken much out of her—they always did. The President, concerned for what he believed to be his wife’s increasingly occurring migraines, had returned from the Oval in between meetings to do his budgetary readings at the small bedroom desk by
her side.

  Michael gazed at his wife with admiration as the sunlight beamed through the sheer window drapes, casting an angelic hue upon her. Look at her, he thought, as he sipped his black coffee. She was still so sexy to him even after all these years together. Critics often said he had been lucky to win the primaries—the truth he knew was that winning the primaries had been skill, winning Laurel had been lucky.

  She began to stir awake.

  “Morning,” he said with a smile.

  “Hey you,” she yawned back groggily with affection. “You got home late.”

  “More hooey with China,” he said casually, then added with a smile. “I got all these nukes. Such a pity I can’t use them.”

  “You’re bad,” she laughed.

  She started to get up when he noticed a scratch on her neck—a remnant of her battle’s close calls. “What happened there?” he asked.

  Drat, she thought. She forgot to conceal it before going to bed. Careless.

  “Oh that,” she said. “It was just—pfft, nothing, it was stupid. So are you going to get a deal? With the Chinese, I mean.”

  Before Michael could answer, the phone rang. Laurel was closer to it so she picked it up, playfully answering in a hushed Marilyn Monroe whisper.

  “Mr. President’s bedroom.”

  But her playful smile quickly vanished, and she passed Michael the phone. “It’s the Chief of Staff. He seems freaked out.”

  Michael grabbed the phone from her hand. “What?”

  And as he listened to the voice on the other end, he grew pale.

  “What happened?” Laurel asked him.

  He held up his hand to hush her—something he had never done before, which only made her realize how dire a situation this must be. China? Russia? Middle East?

  “What I thought I heard you say is not possible, Tom,” Michael emphatically said into the phone. “I must have misheard you, Tom. So, slowly, carefully, Tom. What . . . the heck . . . did . . . you . . . say happened?”

  Then the room went dark, very dark. But it wasn’t just the room, Laurel realized. The outside, the current source of their bedroom’s light, had gone dark too. While her husband dealt with his frightening phone call, Laurel went to the window, pulled back the drapes and looked up to the sky.

  Something was blocking the sun!

  *****

  Johnny was the first of the three to gain consciousness. With his hands cuffed behind him, he dropped to his knees to face the back of the jeep, then wriggled his palms between the two front seats and into Harve’s breast pocket. He lifted the Sergeant’s keys, clumsily unlocked his shackles, then shimmied and twisted his tall, thin frame out of the wreckage, only to be utterly astonished by what he saw next.

  The base was gone! Actually, physically, completely gone. A billow of smoke here or there but other than that, it was just . . . just . . . gone.

  It was impossible.

  The crash must have done something to his memory, he thought. The base must not have been as close as he had imagined. This smoldering expanse of nothingness was something else, and the base must be miles down the road.

  That made no sense, he then thought.

  Were we attacked? Are we at war?

  Focus, Johnny, he told himself. You can figure it out later. You’re free! Run!

  Yes, he thought, he should run. If ever there was a time to run now was it. The Army will be consumed with whatever it was that caused the base to vanish—his own existence would be a mere afterthought to them. He’d have the time to get away, find some nice remote place to live out his life, fake a new identity, and never have to think about the incident again.

  Run is exactly what he should do.

  And he would have ran, if not for the two unconscious men lying in the overturned jeep with gasoline leaking on one end and sparks sparking on the other; two men who would surely die if he didn’t intervene.

  I’ll run later, he sighed as he moved to the jeep to save the lives of his captors.

  “Idiot, idiot, idiot,” he said aloud as he proceeded to pull them out.

  *****

  The West Wing of the White House was in pandemonium. Aids and staffers were zipping from one office to another, and all the phones were ringing off the hook. Michael sped toward the Situation Room surrounded by his senior staff, trying to garner as much information as he could before speaking to his generals. But there was little information to be had.

  “No one knows who’s behind this, sir,” answered the Chief of Staff. “The Russians thought we did it until the Chinese accused them. Egypt thought it was the Israelis, and Israel thought it was Iran. India and Pakistan assumed each other.”

  “Nor is anyone claiming ownership for the giant spacecraft overhead,” added the Communications Director.

  Of course not, thought Michael. What nation on Earth could possibly have the resources to pull off something like this? What human being could be so evil as to kill so many so quickly? So who was it? There seemed to be only one possible explanation but it was too preposterous to accept—and Michael sure as hell didn’t want to be the first to vocalize it.

  “Set up a conference call with the leaders of the G8,” the Commander in Chief barked to his inner circle. “Then put me in a room with the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader of the Senate. And get the Secretary General of the UN on the phone.”

  “He was visiting the Erdek Naval Base in Turkey,” the Chief of Staff responded sadly. “He died in the explosion.”

  “Then get me the Deputy Secretary!” the President shouted. “And if he’s goddamn dead, get me whoever the hell is in charge over there! Jesus.”

  Michael and his entourage turned down the hallway where the Vice President awaited. Peyton knew that Michael would be headed to the Situation Room so it wasn’t hard to plant himself along the way.

  “Mr. President. My God, “he said softly as he approached his running mate. “I was just briefed. What can I do to help?”

  Before Michael could answer, two Secret Service agents approached with urgency.

  “Sir, we have to get you out of Washington.”

  “No,” Michael told them firmly. “The American people need to know that their President is at his desk and on the job.”

  “Mr. President, the enemy craft is overhead and –”

  “And if they had wanted to take out the White House, they would have done so by now. Your task is to get the First Lady and the Vice President to safety.”

  “Mr. President,” Peyton piped in, “I believe I can be of value here.”

  “Your only value to me right now is to stay alive.”

  Peyton looked around, wishing there was a way to speak to his one-time friend and protégé privately, but that was not possible amidst the chaos. He would just have to humble himself in front of the whole entourage, not one of them an ally.

  “Michael, please,” he began softly. “I understood keeping me out of the political side of things, but this is a military situation. I’m your military guy. It’s why you put me on the ticket.”

  “No, Peyton,” Michael responded. “I put you on the ticket to get me the South, and you did. Now, go.”

  Then he turned and headed off, his senior staff in hot pursuit, leaving the Vice President all alone.

  Son-of-a-bitch, thought the former General.

  *****

  Johnny could not remember ever having sweat so much, barring only a few close calls during combat. But as he lugged the second MP through the blistering August sun, far away from the burning jeep, he knew that he had done his good deed for the day, the week, the year. He had saved the lives of two jerks who had only wanted to put him behind bars. If that wasn’t good karma, nothing was.

  He dropped the very large corporal next to the even larger sergeant whom he had lugged to safety minutes earlier, wished them well, and turned to go when he heard a gun being cocked.

  “You’re still under arrest, soldier,” Harve said, lying on the ground where John
ny had left him but now conscious with his pistol pointed at his prisoner’s chest.

  “You gotta be kidding,” Johnny said in amazement. “I just saved your life!”

  “And I thank you for that, Private,” Harve replied, his cocked gun unwavering. “It showed tremendous character on your part. Nonetheless, you broke the law so, like I said, you’re under arrest, Private.”

  “For the love of . . .” Johnny began, then paused, looked at the sprawling empty land where the base had once been, looked at the still unconscious Frank, then blurted, “Well, he still owes me ten bucks!”

  *****

  Jean-François didn’t think he should be allowed in the White House Situation Room. He was just a physicist, not even a US citizen yet, but Gloria Ames, NASA’s deputy administrator, had insisted. These recent horrific events were clear validation of Jean-François’s theories, she had told Raymond Saticoy, NASA’s big cheese. She could relay those theories competently but not with the expertise that Jeff could. And this was to be before the President! If Jeff couldn’t come, she blackmailed, neither would she.

  And much to Jean-François’s chagrin, she had won.

  His plan was to stay in the back and not say a word . . . unless directly asked a direct question . . . and then in as few words as possible . . . and he hoped he would be asked nothing at all. The highest-ranking officers of every branch of the US military were in attendance, as well as the President himself. Despite his many academic accomplishments, Jean-François felt like a little boy on the football field all over again. Please don’t kick me the ball, he thought. Please don’t kick me the ball.

  “From what we know so far,” began General Mitchell, the highest-ranking officer in the United States Air Force, “the alien vessel hovering above us is roughly the size of Rhode Island, but it’s the only one they seem to have.”

  “So it’s confirmed that they’re aliens?” Michael asked, almost relieved that there was at least a clear course to pursue, relieved that someone other than he had first said the word, and relieved that the NASA bigwigs were on hand to explain it all. “Extraterrestrials? This is confirmed?”