Pahnyakin Rising (25 page)

“Do you miss the old me more than you like who I am now?” he asked. 

His insecurity was shining brightly and Dresden knew what he really wanted to ask.

“There’s not much you could do to make me
not
miss you,” she smiled.  “You’ve always been my best friend.”

“Oh,” he stated, glancing to the ground.

“Yeah.”

“What happens if you can’t get back?  Then what?”

“I guess we’ll figure that out later.  But really, you’re probably just gonna have to get used to me doing some pretty stupid stuff instead of giving me the silent treatment for, like, half a mile.”

She looked over to him and flashed a wide grin. 

Dodge playfully shoved her upper left arm and Dresden stared ahead.

She stopped and held her hand up.

“Dodge, what is that?”

“What’s what?” he asked.  He peered ahead but could only see pitch black.

“That sound.  Humming.  It sounds like humming.  Or a drill?” 

Dresden turned her head to the group.

“Do you guys hear that?”

“I don’t hear anything,” said one of Easton’s gray-haired elders.  “I think this trip could be getting to you.”

“No,” the teenager argued.  “You guys don’t hear that?  It’s coming from up there.”

The others shrugged and murmured amongst themselves, certain the leader standing before them was imagining a threat.

She waved for them to continue but stopped again five minutes later.

“You guys really don’t hear that?”

They stopped walking and listened.

“I hear it,” Greg agreed. 

“We’re getting close,” Dresden said.   She pointed.  “Do you see that glow, or do you think I’m imagining that, too?”

On the horizon was a flickering orange pulse that stretched at least half a mile to the road’s right. 

Dresden’s heart beat irregularly.  She choked on her breath and fought to calm her nerves at the unexpected realism of dying.  But she knew this had to be done, even if she didn’t make it out alive.  There was no going back. 

It was now or never.



Dresden pulled Dodge and the group from the road at first sight of the Pahnyakin base. 

“You said there was one silo,” Dresden panicked to Dodge as they crouched in the darkness.

She couldn’t tell if the group had been spotted by the hundreds of creatures forming circular barricades the red silos.  Four smaller silos, 20-feet-high, protected the 40-foot-tall red metal grain bin in the center.  Part of her reasoned that if the Pahnyakins had spotted the intruders, there would be troops sent to capture the humans.  But, Dresden thought, if she spotted a team of Pahnyakins nearing Easton, she would wait for them to close in, rather than risk the lives of her people by sending them out.

“Well,” he shot back, “nobody’s been out this way in a long time.  I guess they’ve been building more.”

“Is that why they haven’t been attacking us like we thought they would be?” Greg demanded Dresden to answer.

She shook her head and shrugged, irritated.  “I don’t know.  Maybe.  It’s not important right now.”

“How is that not important?” he prodded.

Dresden smacked her hand on the cold earth.  “Because it’s not, damn it.  Right now, in this moment, the only thing we need to be asking is how we’re going to pull off a successful breach with seventeen of us to however many they have.  Even from just the troops outside, they have us outnumbered significantly.  If the troops from Easton come back, we’re even more screwed than we already are.”

“So you brought us here to die, just like your last group,” the gray-haired woman stated.  It was never meant to be a question.

“How was she supposed to know about the extra silos?” Dodge shot to the woman. 

The woman, crouched in a huddle with the rest of her people, stood.  “I came here to fight, not just die with no chance of living.  There’s no way we’re going to live.”

“Sit down,” Dresden snapped.  “Now.  This isn’t the time for a power struggle.  You’re here.  We all are.”

“I told you already that we’re not all going to make it.  I wish I could say we’ll all walk away from here, but each and every one of us has a doubt that we’ll even be one of us to survive—even me.”

Dodge looked softly upon Dresden but she turned her head.

“We’re going to need a diversion,” she continued.  “We need two volunteers: one to grab the guards’ attention and another to throw a grenade.”

Her people hesitated and looked to each other, their eyes urging one another to step up.

“I can throw the grenade,” Greg said, slightly raising his left hand.  “I saw it on TV once and always wanted to try it.”

Dresden faked a soft smile.  “Okay.  Dodge, arm him.”

“We still need a second volunteer,” she declared.  “You’ll get close enough to draw them to you.  When they get too close, you’re going to run.  And I mean
run
.”

“Where’s the rest of you gonna be?” spoke a gap-toothed man wearing a ratty black baseball cap. 

“We’re going around the diversion,” she replied.

She took her screwdriver out of her pocket and dug it in the dirt until grooves appeared.

Dresden smacked the tip against a short line in the earth.

“This is the main diversion.  This person is going to pull troops from the base.”

She pointed to the right.  “This is where Greg is going to be.  He’s going to wait until their troops pool together before he throws the grenade.”

“We’re going to be over here, behind Greg.  It will put us about sixty feet from the right-most silo.  I don’t care which of you can do it…We need a shooter to knock out the generators behind the smaller silos.  Get a group of them as close as you can to the generators and then shoot the casing until you can hit the fuel cells.  If we can take out the first two silos, we can probably knock out most of their troops on-site.”

“What about the big silo?” Greg asked.

“I’m taking that,” she said assertively.  “That’s the end-all.  Did you see the generators and power lines around it?”

He nodded.

“That’s the one we want.  It’s got more power flowing through there than probably three towns did before all of this happened.  That’s why we need to pull as many of them away from it as we can by taking out the smaller silos first.”

Dresden paused again.

“We
are
going to save this world tonight.”

Nobody said anything. 

They didn’t know
what
to say prior to their marches to certain death.

The gray-haired woman swept loose strands of her limp locks from her leathery forehead. 

“I’ll do it,” she said.  “I’ll be the diversion.”

-25-

Dresden felt nervous enough for the entire group, but she strived to keep her reservations hidden and her shakiness under control. 

She gave Adeline the final push she needed to divert the Pahnyakins’ attention—and even armed her with a grenade upon the woman’s request. 

“I can’t do this without knowing I have some secondary protection,” Adeline insisted.

In the dark, the group walked with Greg to a spot six feet from where Dresden projected the Pahnyakin troops to be.  Dresden patted Greg on the back.

“As soon as you pull the pin and toss it,” you run.  Meet us over there,” she pointed.  “We’re going to start taking the last silo.”

He nodded. 

Adeline took a deep breath and walked closer to the Pahnyakin camp. 

The first to notice the lone human was a Uni.  It lifted its head.  If it clicked to the guards, Dresden would never know.  The hum of the generators made her feel like her brain was turning to jelly.  Her eardrums vibrated and she lost more and more of her hearing as she crept closer to her destination.

Dresden paused the group’s movements and turned to watch Adeline in the light glow cast on the street. 

The woman waved her hands high above her head and continued her walk.

‘Stop,’
Dresden ordered in her mind. 
‘You’re getting too close.’

Dresden estimated a good 90 Pahnyakins responded to the baiting.  Some remained as guards around the silos.   

She would have smiled if Adeline had just
stopped
. 

Greg drew his arm back.  He had pulled the pin to his grenade. 

Adeline sprinted towards the Pahnyakins as Greg released and ran in the group’s direction.

“No,” Dresden screamed.  She couldn’t hear her own voice.

Seconds slowed.  An explosion engulfed Adeline and knocked the approaching creatures to the ground in throes. 

She had already pulled the pin to her grenade.

Greg fell at the sound of the second explosion and rolled over to look back. 

They were dead.  They were all lifeless heaps of scorched flesh with half-attached metal armor on their torsos, legs, and necks. 

Dresden focused on Adeline’s corpse.  It was aflame in the midst of the Pahnyakin army. 

“No,” she screamed again.  She sobbed and hunched over, slapping her palms against her trembling thighs. 

Dodge placed a firm hold on her shoulder and pulled her upright.  He pointed at the first silo and tapped his wrist. 

If they were going to make a move, it had to be now.

Dozens more Pahnyakins flooded from the first-most smallest silo.  Dresden sprinted in its direction, fueled by bitterness and vengeance. 

She didn’t count how many Pahnyakins raced past her and towards the flames in the road before they started to notice the group was there. 

The creatures turned on the group.  Dresden furiously fought against an Imperator and, between ducking and landing the tip of her screwdriver against the being’s armor, could see Dodge doing the same just two feet away.

Greg and the mousy brunette were teamed up against a Uni, and Dresden noticed the rest of the group were also in pairs determined on which available partner was nearest when each alien came for them. 

Even Dodge was struggling, jabbing his seven-inch-long serrated knife at the creature he battled.

Dresden felt her screwdriver catch in the Imperator’s spinal armor and she yanked down on her handle.  She could feel the crack of the armor radiate through the screwdriver and through her hand.  She kicked her left heel to the center of the Pahnyakin’s left knee and the creature lost its balance.  It crashed face-first to the ground and she stomped her foot on its flesh before slicing her tool in the horizontal port in between its shoulder blades.

She pulled the screwdriver from its back and raced to Dodge’s aid.  He bent his back just above his tailbone to avoid the Imperator’s hits while he was focused not to land on his back and against the grenades.  The stun gun sword swatted his leg as the tee handle rested on a loop near the top of his jeans. 

The Imperator reached out for Dodge and never seemed to know Dresden was lurking behind it.  She jammed her screwdriver in a gap at its lower back and pried its armor off with her hands.  It turned to face its newest, more deadly attacker, and Dodge made his move.  He whipped his knife across the Pahnyakin’s back as it squirmed until he could slam the tip of the serrated blade deep in its back.  When he withdrew the knife, chunks of jagged flesh fell to the ground.  Dodge stabbed again at the creature and twisted the knife deep in its port.  Dresden saw a brief golden flash from under the Imperator’s visor.

Dodge and Dresden were left to look at one another as the Pahnyakin fell between them.  Their eyes locked and Dresden felt a deeper need to keep him safe.  Despite his hardened personality, it only recently occurred to the girl that he might need her as much as she needed him.  He probably would never (seriously) admit to it, but he didn’t have to. 

She hurriedly nodded to the nearest of the four smaller grain-bin silos and used her index and thumb to signal the need to fire at the generators. 

Dodge reciprocated the gesture and shook his head.  He held up his bloodied knife and patted his sword. 

The man wasn’t armed with a gun.  And what good would it do?  He was a horrible shot and probably had no business being trusted with a gun, anyhow.  Dresden couldn’t talk much.  The girl had never fired a gun and wasn’t sure she would really know where to start.  She only knew about the safety buttons from watching Dodge and Shepherd since she had been there.

She grabbed his hand and dragged him to Nia and Greg.  Dresden motioned to Dodge to take over in the fight.