Chapter 48- Fire For Effect

Chapter 48

Fire For Effect

Richmond, Virginia

A young man was stood outside late at night, holding his cell phone high above his head, trying to get a signal.  Perhaps he was waiting for his girlfriend to call, perhaps he was waiting for his mother to call, perhaps a great many things.  As it turns out, it didn’t matter at all what he intended, what he hoped or what he dreamed.

A surprising sight hopped into his view, causing him a pause.  A squirrel, no larger than half bag of sugar landed at his feet.  He took an exaggerated step back and laughed.  Maybe he’d been drinking, maybe he was on drugs.  Maybe he was afraid of squirrels.  As it turns out, it didn’t matter what he was afraid of.  All of his fears and nightmares were about to be subsumed.

The squirrel’s small bloody face tore apart as it leapt again.

A new day had dawned.

Ax, Utah

The convoy of trucks drove on, faster and fast, trying to get away from Salt Lake City.  The CB radio kept up the chatter and reporting that General McInnes had sealed off Salt Lake City, declaring the “Free State of Utah” and that he would no longer follow the orders of General Pierce, the false General of the United States.

Pierce had promised swift vengeance to restore the Union and the people who had once lived in Ax, Utah, had been woken by refugees, American refugees fleeing Utah as fast as they could.  So they had gotten out of bed fast, hair still a mess and make up not applied and grabbed whatever possessions they could.  They had fled into SUV’s and trucks, cars and Humvee’s and they had taken to the road.

Overhead, bat-winged “vengeance” awaited an order.  An Air Force Major curtly acknowledged the call and swung his B-2 Spirit Bomber around.  A single small black canister fell into the center of Salt Lake City, casting the fleeing refugees in a new shadow.  Another mushroom cloud rose above America’s bleeding landscape.

Chicago, Illinois

Jack Krane sat on his couch, a glass of whiskey in his hand.  His wife, Leah, sat sobbing against him as he watched the television.  Only one week beforehand they had watched in awe as Senator Long had delivered his “stolen night” speech and re-energized America and its people.

Now there were reports coming in that the world community had turned its back on America.  A multi-national force stood ready to seal “diseased and chaotic America” off from the rest of the world.  Jack shook his head.

“Too late, it’s all just far too late,” he said to Leah.

Washington, D.C

When the bomb finally went off, it blew apart the Stryker armored personnel carrier, just as it was intended to. But it also blew apart another forty or fifty innocent protestors who were gathered around what was once referred to as the Whitehouse.

The bomb also blew apart a huge metal fence and a white-stone building that had once inspired so much in so many.  America lost its capitol and it’s enforced leaders.  Heroes and villains died alike in a storm of fire and rock.

Later on a terrorist group claimed credit for assassinating America’s first ever tyrant.  The Generals that had set up their own independent commands jostled to take command whilst General Kyle continued to report rioting and chaos in Richmond.

Then he didn’t report anything more.  Richmond went “dark” after six nights of unspeakable blood and terror.  It was the first of many; it was the first of them all.

Valhalla Vector, Above the US

A squadron of F-22 Raptor’s flew, flanking a “Big-Eye” command and control vehicle.  The huge “Big-Eye” was set up as a bank of radars and computers, with enough optics on it to scan the whole of the Eastern seaboard.

But all you had to do was look out of your cockpit window and look down at the spreading darkness to know that whatever it was that America was at war with, it had spread faster than anyone could have expected.

There were no lights as such on in Richmond, Raleigh, and Baltimore or even in D.C.  Senator Long had moved the Capitol to Philadelphia and army units had swarmed towards the gathering night, hoping for a chance to redeem themselves in a bloody final battle against the invaders.

But they didn’t come to fight a war; they simply vanished into the population, into the undergrowth and into the air.  It turned out that to stop them completely required the kind of will that no sane human being possessed.

You see any living cell could be assimilated, anything at all.  Even patches of grass had been known to be turned into “the infiltrators”.  They weren’t a favorite choice, they wanted to be human.  But when no human was available, they would take on any shape at all. Mice, rats, cats and dogs, anything.

As fingers were pointed and hands were raised, the ugly truth came out that the one chance the human race had to seal these “things” away was to leave them where they had been found in the ice.  But General Pierce had given orders for them to be brought back and they had been lost into the mountains of Venezuela.

And now they were everywhere.

“That’s the order,” said Vampire Leader, the squadron commander.

“Are you sure skip?” asked Vampire Three.

“Affirmative,” replied Vampire Leader.  “We’ve got official strike orders,”

The F-22’s swung low with dizzying speed above the Atlanta skyline.  Missiles and bombs, twenty millimeter cannons cut apart the vast crowds of people caught on the bridge.  The great city was sealed off in fire and blood.

It was still just a token gesture.  You was as well have asked an ant to stop a volcano from erupting. You may as well have asked a small blind child to stop a turn back a herd of stampeding buffalo.

Nothing could stop the avalanche now.

Manhattan, New York

Screams and gunshots, a raging fire at Macy’s and a cloud rising above the Empire State building as the city that never sleeps went into its final death throes.

An orgy of death swirled around the littered and ravaged streets of 5^th Avenue.  Times Square had been the last effective blockade and it had fallen a day and a half ago to a horde of attacking beasts.  They had been getting bigger and bolder, more and more intelligent and more and more advanced.

Some of them were using guns too now.  Of course they preferred to catch humans alive so they could be “changed,” but when they put up a stiff fight, the infiltrators would simply cut them apart with gunfire.

Manhattan died slowly, taking its stubborn toll on the looters and the renegades, takings its brutal toll on the beasts that owned the night.  Their death howls filled the air over and over as flame throwers, Molotov cocktails and other weapons caused them to die a fiery death.

But as long as one or two survived, there would always be more.  There were always more.  And they didn’t need to sleep, they didn’t need to eat.  They didn’t feel pity or remorse or fear or fatigue.  They simply went on in an unstoppable tsunami of flesh and fangs, teeth and blood.  They swept America from the map, one city at a time.

Mexico was falling too, though the Mexican army was now joined by volunteer troops from all over South America.  And the Canadians were fighting a ranged battle with cruise missiles and sniper rifles.

The Chinese had a much more elegant solution to the American disease.

Sturgess, Texas

A new sun rose over America and a small town vaporized; metal turning into gas.  Thousands died in a split second and thousands more were swept away by the rising flames and fire.

It was still far too late