Legion (An Apocalyptic Horror Novel) (Hell on Earth Book 2) (7 page)

Johnson stood his ground.

A blast of noise.

A mid-air impact altered the creature’s trajectory and sent it tumbling off the pier and into the ocean. More gunfire erupted nearby and Hernandez ducked down. Johnson spun around and pumped his fist in the air. “Yes! Let them have it!”

The crew of the Augusta filled the pier and brought their M164As to bear. Four dozen sailors pulled their triggers at once, sending forth a blanket of fire. Johnson grabbed Hernandez and dragged him behind the other men, out of harm’s way. He glanced back and witnessed legions of monsters flopping to the ground as their organs exploded and heads split open. The crew of the Augusta slammed in magazine after magazine. The gunfire was endless.

But the enemy kept coming.

“Fall back,” shouted Johnson, taking command of his men. “Back to the ship.”

The wall of rifles inched backwards, still firing, still reloading, but retreating. The enemy was not wary, even as they continued to fall. They came in continuous waves, a hellish banzai charge.

The sound of rifles stuttering dry brought despair—the scratching of death’s fingers on an empty chalkboard.

The first crewman fell, pounced on by one of the ape-like creatures. The attacker tore open his chest cavity and ripped free one of his ribs. More men fell behind him. Hernandez was aware that he was screaming.

“Back to the goddamn boat!” Johnson shouted.

The men turned and ran, most of their weapons empty and useless. Turning their backs led to a rout, but some of them might still have a chance. Hernandez raced to the front of the group, desperately reaching for the Augusta’s distant gangway.

He had to get there. He had to make it.

When his boot came down on the metal ramp, Hernandez gurned with relief. Snot ran down his face, and his knees buckled, but he was gathered aboard by his crew. Johnson was right behind him.

“Pull up the ramp,” Johnson shouted.

The ramp clunked and recalled itself.

The disfigured apes leapt onto it before it disappeared and began to clamber aboard. 

Rat-a-tat-tat.

Port-side machine guns opened up and tore apart the enemy, removing them before they had a chance to make it onto the deck. Reinforcements manned the rails with fully loaded rifles. The enemies on the pier were sitting ducks.

Johnson grabbed his nearest ensign, Cuervo, and barked into the woman’s face. “Tell the bridge to get moving. We’re too vulnerable sitting here.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Hernandez wiped the snot from his face and looked out at Norfolk Station. Smoke billowed from every structure. The sky was black. The enemy was everywhere.

Dead sailors lay scattered, and many of the smaller vessels in dock were being overrun, their crews besieged. Yet it was something else that chilled Hernandez to his bones.

A thirty-foot giant strode along the main road towards the base, a thing of rippling muscle and sinew. Its face was a marble sculpture—a beauty to behold. But it was no man, and such beauty only hid its bloodlust as it reached down and crushed a fleeing jeep full of men. With every man it tore apart, it bellowed in triumph. It was a monster, greater and more vile than all before it. 

Hernandez flopped against the railing, unable to talk.

It wasn’t aliens. It was something worse.

* * *

“
W
hat is that
?” someone asked.

Hernandez eased himself away from the railing. “I don’t know, and I don’t want to stick around to find out.”

The Augusta had moved away from the pier, but that didn’t mean it was free from danger. War still raged at Norfolk Naval Station, and the giant had only added to the slaughter. The crew gasped as the towering creature picked up a fuel tanker as if it were a toy and hurled it through the air. It collided with the main runaway of the USS New Hampshire and exploded. Sailors screamed and threw themselves overboard as the searing flames engulfed them. A parked F15 fighter plane listed onto its side and came apart in another mighty explosion. More sailors screamed in agony.

Meanwhile, the bulk of the enemy force—the burnt men and disfigured apes—continued tearing apart those unlucky enough to be in their way. Droves of men and women had made it back aboard their ships, but just as many still lay stranded in the centre of the base, standing back to back and fighting valiantly, yet losing decisively.

“All munitions to the deck,” Johnson commanded. “I want a continuous line of fire supporting those men and women still trapped on land. Let’s turn this around.”

Glad to receive orders, the Augusta’s crew got to work. Hernandez retrieved his combat rifle and struggled to load it with a magazine. His hands were shaking. Back at the rail, he lined up his scope and started picking shots. The first four trigger-pulls missed, chucking up chunks of concrete, but the next one winged a disfigured ape. The creature had been about to leap on top of a bleeding woman, but hit the ground instead—its right leg disintegrated.

Hernandez gritted his teeth and picked his next target.

Another direct hit. The burnt man cartwheeled into the water.

The next thing his scope spotted surprised him: Admiral Kirsch was still alive.

His marines also. The old man had lost his cap, revealing a thick crop of white hair, and his dress uniform was now stained entirely crimson—but he was alive. He still held his weighty pistol, and the thing still fired like a bucking mule. The four marines with him placed their shots with lethal accuracy, but were clearly exhausted. They moved sluggishly, brought their aims around a little slower every time. Eventually, the creatures would close in on them.

“Help the admiral,” Hernandez shouted, hoping he would be heard. “Hangar 2.”

Peering back through his scope, Hernandez watched the added fire support take immediate effect. Burnt men fell one after the other. The four marines moved with renewed enthusiasm. Kirsch looked around for who to thank and soon spotted the Augusta. He raised a hand and saluted them, then went back to popping off shots with his massive pistol.

Hernandez’s rifle clicked dry. He ejected the mag and jammed in another. Picking shots was easy because the enemy were everywhere. Had they all come out of a single gate?

Was there one nearby?

Contemplating the odds only made his heart beat faster, so Hernandez concentrated only on what he could see through his scope, and on pulling the trigger. Tat-tat-tat. His skull rang with the constant onslaught of noise. Nausea overwhelmed him.

“Fire on the big bastard,” Johnson yelled.

Hernandez pulled away from his scope and realised the giant had made it over to the hangars and was decimating the remaining Naval forces. Kirsch and his marines scattered around their huge foe and opened up with their rifles. 

The giant roared, its long blond hair whipping around its shoulders—a statue come to life. A god of destruction. It reached down and snatched up one of the marines, holding the screaming man for a moment and grinning. Then he lofted the tiny body forty feet into the air and watched it thud against the concrete with a sickening splat.

Kirsch circled around in front of the giant and stood his ground defiantly. He waved a hand at his remaining three marines and ordered them to run. They refused. The four men stood together and unloaded the last of their ammunition into the massive enemy standing over them.

The giant flinched, took a step back, and let out a devastating roar. It swatted away the small-arms fire like mosquitos on its skin, then swung a massive arm and clobbered a nearby communications tower. The metal scaffolding folded in on itself, and the mass of electronic equipment held atop it came loose and fell to the ground. Kirsch had been standing right underneath.

Hernandez looked away and cursed as the old man and his three marines disappeared beneath a huge pile of twisted metal. Those still alive and fighting nearby faltered. Their admiral had been killed. Their leader was dead.

Ensign Tyke stood beside Hernandez and shook his head in despair. “What the hell is happening, Lieutenant? I don’t understand.”

Hernandez took a breath and pulled a face when he smelt blood. “It will be okay, Tyke. We’ll get ahead of this thing and—”

Tyke’s head disappeared from his shoulders. One minute he’d been anxiously staring at Hernandez, then he was a pair of empty shoulders with a stump of gristle and bone for a neck. His body slumped over the railing and into the water.

Gunfire peppered the deck. More of the Augusta’s crew fell.

Hernandez squinted through his scope, urgently scanning the battlefield. What he saw drained the blood from his veins.

The burnt men were picking up the rifles of dead sailors and using them to return fire at the various ships. The safety of being on board evaporated.

An almighty blast came from a ship’s main gun somewhere. The noise of the battlefield was like living inside a swarm of bees. Disorientation. No way to tell what was happening anymore. Chaos.

“Sail out!” ordered Johnson. “Norfolk is lost. We need to get to sea. Engines full power. Go! Go! Go!”

The decks rumbled. The Augusta leaned starboard. Crewmen ducked behind the rails, taking cover while bullets whizzed over their heads like hornets. A junior Lieutenant fell onto his back when he was too slow to get down, and he lay there screaming like a child. No one went to help him. Not yet.

Hernandez crawled over to Johnson who had taken a knee behind one of the ship’s two MH-60R Seahawk helicopters. One of them leaked from a pierced fuel line.

“Captain, should I call Command?”

“Already tried,” said Johnson. “Nothing but noise right now. We have to relocate.”

“Relocate where?”

“I don’t know, Hernandez! Right now, I just want to get my ship and crew out of harm’s way. You’re standing here doing nothing.”

Hernandez was taken aback by the sudden venom in his commander’s voice, but when he considered the stress of the situation, he understood. “What would you have me do, sir?”

“Check on the wounded.” Johnson turned away and got on the radio. Clearly any conversation with Hernandez was over.

So Hernandez went to carry out his orders. The Augusta moved half-a-kilometre out from Norfolk’s piers, almost out of danger, but the horror still flared back on land. Even now, rifles clacked and larger guns boomed. The giant had disappeared, but the burnt men still swarmed, mopping up whatever remained.

Hernandez just witnessed Pearl Harbour.

And survived it.

The Augusta’s crew stood mostly intact. Hernandez estimated the death toll at no more than twenty. Not bad considering the fates of ships such as the New Hampshire.

Seaman Patrick briefed Hernandez about the ship’s damage, and that too was within the realms of ‘lucky’. Nothing powerful enough to pierce the hull had come their way, and the only severe damage was to the backup comms dish. It wasn’t a problem, so long as the main dish remained operational. The Seahawk’s burst fuel line could be easily repaired. They had gotten out of there with their butts intact, but what came next, no one knew.

Hernandez headed to his quarters and grabbed his cell phone—wasn’t surprised when the call didn’t connect. If the world was at war, the networks would be overloaded with panicked callers. He would keep trying though.

“What are you doing, Hernandez?”

Hernandez looked up to see Lieutenant Danza. “Trying to call home. My ma lives in Austin, and there was one of those stones there, I think.”

“And my sister lives in Columbus where there’s one too. Think I don’t want to take a minute and make some personal calls? I’m sure everyone does, but we have to focus on our duties right now.”

“It’s just one call.”

“And what if one of the crew sees you make it? You’ll have three hundred sailors all demanding to drop tools and call their mothers. Once they get a hold of someone they love there’ll be no getting them back, especially if they get bad news.”

Hernandez saw Danza’s point, but he wasn’t about to take a dressing down by a fellow lieutenant—especially one beneath him by time served. Hernandez’s rank and seniority placed him below only Captain Johnson. “What an officer does and what a crewman does are not the same thing. I don’t need you to tell me how to conduct myself.”

Danza studied him for a moment, a slight smirk on his face. “If you think that screaming like a little girl is how an officer should conduct himself, then you have it all wrapped up.”

“I’m sorry? Care to explain what you mean by that?”

Danza shook his head and chuckled. “I mean that the entire crew saw you scream when that thing had you.”

“I thought I was going to die!”

“We’re US Navy. We’re trained to die. And when we do, we don’t scream like children.”

“Fuck you, Danza. Go back to driving a taxi for Danny DeVito.”

“Ouch, a
Taxi
joke. They never get old. Just watch yourself, Hernandez. You might be second in command, but everyone knows you don’t have any balls.”

Danza walked away, leaving Hernandez to clench his fists and fume alone in his cabin.

Who did that piece of shit think he was? Fellow officers were supposed to respect one another. He was probably just another racist prick who begrudged a ‘
spik
’ being in a position to give orders. Hernandez had dealt with dicks like Danza during his entire nine-year career. Snarling bullies who cried ‘affirmative action’ every time Hernandez got a promotion over them. They failed to see that he had an unblemished record and perfect aptitude test scores.