Second Chances (41 page)

“So, we've got to put him down? I can get...”

“No, not yet,” Diego said. “I need hands to hold him down, then something to relieve the gas. A hose down his throat might work, or we'll have to poke a hole in his side with a big syringe and let the gas out.”

“Fine. Whatever. Get it done,” Miles said.

“Remind me not to tell you about the cow I just had to deal with,” Diego said, shaking his head.

“Oh?”

“Twisted uterus. The uterus gets all twisted up like a loaf of bread. Hell to untwist. Usually it results in a dead calf. We were lucky though,” he said.

“Thought you said to not remind you?” Miles grunted. Diego looked over to him and grinned slightly. The colonel snorted realizing he'd fallen for the trick. He shook his head and then left.

\------{}------/

In the fall a giant long-legged animal marched towards the base, driving the herds of aliens and dinosaurs ahead of it in a sporadic stampede. The herds stayed ahead of the animal and scattered at its approach.

“I don't like the look of that thing,” Miles said, lowering his binoculars. From a distance they could see dangling tentacles underneath its massive body, and flying things all around. The thing devoured anything its tentacles could grab, plant or animal, stripping the landscape. Its long six legs were oddly segmented with three knee joints. It made a loud moaning sound, almost deafening.

“Madros de dios man! It's a nightmare!” Carlos said. “What do we do?” he asked, sounding anxious.

“We get ready. It's not headed here now, but I don't want to be caught out if it wants a bath,” Miles said grimly.

“What can we do?” Carlos demanded. “We should run!” He indicated the passing herds.

“No, we fight,” Miles growled. “Fight to protect what's ours. Our kids, our food. We'll fight with everything we've got,” he said grimly. Carlos and Rodrigo nodded.

They watched the thing for two anxious days as it stepped ever closer to them. It stopped at night sometimes, standing as still as a statue. Animals would sometimes return to the area around it. In the morning it took advantage of that and snapped up its breakfast.

Miles got close enough to get a good look. The tentacles were a sickly greenish pink, with claws on the outer edge and what looked like teeth on the flat sides. It tore things apart like a chainsaw. Anything too slow, like a wounded long necked dino, just got torn to shreds.

Eventually the giant long legged animal changed course to their base. Miles figured it was inevitable; they had the largest concentration of meat around and all of it was trapped in the pens. He was tempted to let the animals loose, but decided no, they had to fight to protect what they had. At least they had time. The thing had long legs, but it zig zagged across the land in a slow march.

He got his people underground and then used machinery and the weapons he and Joe had made to fight back. He'd stockpiled them, preferring to use them for the base's defenses over hunting. “Now's the time?” Joe said. “You know we've never really tested this shit. Sure we played with it...”

“Field test,” Miles said. He too was uncertain if the polyp juice would work well for the flame throwers and other weapons or not. They'd played with it a few times but really hadn't tested it fully. “No time like the present,” he murmured, hefting an RPG.

The RPG was a new thing they'd worked out. He'd had the plans, but they hadn't had a lot of the materials for it. Joe had modified a liquid rocket made out of a can and some polyp juice. A blank round kicked the thing off the barrel and into the air. The round's hot discharge gases pierced the thin latex covering the polyp juice, igniting it. Since the juice was in a balloon, it sprayed out under pressure, igniting in the gases to form a crude rocket. Fins on the outside of the container were angled to throw it into a spin. They had two different rounds. One was a spear with backward facing tines that could pierce the leathery skin of a croc. The other one was a true RPG.

Miles had parted with a half cup of his precious black powder for each of the six RPG rounds they had made. They had four left. Each was wrapped in clay and wire to form a fragmentation grenade. A long fuse was lit with the rocket.

So far they'd tested six of the spears and two of the RPGs. Only half actually got to anywhere he would call the bulls-eye. They RPGs were impressive when they went off however.

They also had an improvised mortar using many of the same system components. Balloon bladders of fuel with a warhead or rock on top were dropped down a hollow tube with a spike and a spark plug. A battery powered the spark plug. When the fuel air ignited, the mortar round took off with a whump. Again it was inaccurate, but it was the best they'd come up with. Rodrigo had come up with a net warhead, but the damn things tangled in the air half the time.

Joe hefted his Gatling gun. The thing was amusing but archaic. The machinist had rigged up pipes to shoot hollow spears using air pressure. It was slow; it was hard to aim and was definitely not man portable at over a hundred pounds. Joe wrestled the thing onto a mount on his truck, then plugged in the air lines.

“Are you serious about that thing?”

“Hey, it's better than the blunderbusts,” Joe said. Miles snorted.

The last weapon was also untested, a blunderbust. It was messy but damn intimidating. He'd rigged one by each gate. It fired scrap metal and flames in an arch.

They roared out of the base with the three vehicles, Miles and Rodrigo in the Camero, Joe and Diego in the truck, and Raul, Mya, and Jesus in the flatbed. They tried tossing Molotov cocktails in front of the beast to turn it but it just made a moaning sound and stepped over the flames.

“That's not working!” Maya yelled.

“No shit!” Miles called back. “Plan B!”

“What's plan B?” Mya called back.

“Hammer it with everything we've got!” Miles said, swerving to the side as a tentacles smashed down in front of where he'd been headed. It curled about itself then rose back into the air. “Stay out from under it! Repeat, get clear of the thing! Hit it from the outside!” he said, dodging another descending tentacle. Rodrigo pointed frantically to another coming in from the side. He swerved around the first and caught sight of the second tangling with it. He grinned.

This was real combat, not the hunting they'd done. He missed it but didn't realize he'd missed it until they were in the thick of it. The weapons they were using were meant for combat, not to kill something but leave it intact. “Don't bother with the guns; use the flame throwers and other weapons!” Miles snarled when he saw Mya shooting with her 30/06. The rounds either didn't penetrate or the thing just didn't care.

“The RPG!” Miles snarled to Rodrigo.

“On it!” Rodrigo said, climbing out of the window to sit on the door. “Keep her steady!” Rodrigo called, trying to aim.

“Easier said than done!” Miles said, hitting a rut, then bounding off a rock. He saw and heard the weapon fire. He leaned forward practically to the steering wheel to see what Rodrigo had aimed at. The RPG was a spear, it flew between the waving tentacles then arched over. “Shit! You missed! How can you miss something that big!” He demanded.

“I ...Mierda I did! This thing doesn't have the range!” Rodrigo called back, climbing back in to get to the back seat to reload.

“Quit making excuses!” Miles snarled as the thing made loud warbling sounds, then long groans like a whale. He looked over his shoulder to see Joe's crazy Gatling gun letting loose into the tentacles. One or two impaled a tentacle, but most of the spears fell short of the underbelly and arched back down into the ground. One was grabbed by a tentacle then dropped.

“This isn't working!” Mya screamed.

“Tell me something I don't fucking know!” Miles snarled. He swerved to avoid a rock, jolting Rodrigo. Suddenly they had even more things to contend with, the fliers started dive bombing them. “What the hell is their problem?” Miles growled, avoiding one animal as it swung in front of the Camaro.

“They roost on the thing's back,” Rodrigo grunted. “Zopilote?”

“Huh?” Miles asked, then snarled again to avoid one of the bird creatures. “Harpies,” he snarled.

“Whatever, jefe,” Rodrigo said. “So now what?”

“We try to drive this thing off or lead it away,” Miles said. He caught sight of Mya throwing a winch line around the thing's leg. She grabbed the flatbed for dear life as Jesus swerved the truck then the line went taut. The truck bucked to a stop hard. The animal stopped, then seemed to stumble a bit. A tentacle dropped to touch the line. Jesus peeled out, spinning the tires, endangering them; they could get stuck. “Cut that line!” Miles bellowed.

Mya hit the line with a machete, hysterical strength drove her but the braided line didn't break. The tentacle moved down the line, feeling her blows as low frequency twangs. She looked up and screamed just as the lasso around the thing's foot let go and Jesus pulled off. The thing tried to keep hold of the wire but it slid through its grasp. The hook on the tip snagged a piece of flesh, ripping it away to bounce behind them as they got clear.

“That was too close!” Mya said as they got closer to Miles and the others to regroup.

“Dama eras loco!” Rodrigo said. Mya snickered.

“We're not stopping it. We are distracting it,” Raul said. “But we can't keep this up forever,” he warned.

Miles grunted. He remembered something, something from a movie. He doubted it would work, Mya's crazy stunt had proven that. But if they concentrated their weapons...”Give it a hot foot!” he called out. “Concentrate on the legs!”

“This isn't some walking mechanical elephant from Star Wars Colonel! It's got
six
legs!” Rodrigo yelled. “Which one?!?”

“I don't care! Hurt it enough and it'll realize it's not worth it!” Miles snarled. Rodrigo muttered something about loco again, then leaned out the window once more as Miles swerved about to charge. He fired one of their precious RPGs into the creature’s front leg. The round tore it up, exploding in a welter of fire and gore. A second RPG from Mya missed.

Miles realized they were on the home stretch when he hit the gravel of the improvised road. He did a quick assessment and realized the thing was headed right into the junk yard. The animal stepped over the wall and onto a partially cut-up car. The metal shards stuck into its foot. It bellowed in pain, a loud fluting sound and then moved off, limping. Bits of metal dribbled from the foot. Bluish ichor stained the ground around them. Shards of glass and plastic glittered on the ground. It tried to step to one side but stepped on another car with its lead left foot. It bellowed again as more metal stung it.

A third RPG round from Rodrigo hit the right middle injured leg as it rose into the air. The thing bellowed again, obviously in pain. It held the foot up for a long moment, then seemed to change its mind. It turned away, stepping around the vehicles and then limped off through the fields. The harpies swopped about for a minute or two, then they too angled off, following the leviathan.

“We need to hit it again!” Mya called out. Miles pulled up to park near the north gate. He shook his head, watching the thing go.

“No. We've wounded it, and if we keep on it we might drive it right into the base. Let it go,” he said, feeling exhausted for some reason. He turned to see the north gate open and Carlos and a few other well-armed gauchos come out. He snorted as Carlos came over to him. A couple of the gauchos were cheering and pointing. Rodrigo got hugged and back slapped as he climbed out of the car.

“So, now we have that to contend with. What's next?” Carlos demanded. He surveyed the flattened fields and devastated landscape. It hadn't gotten to within a hundred yards of the base, so the herds that had huddled for shelter near the base's wall were safe. But a lot of the crops had been devastated.

“We beat it, didn't we?” Miles asked, totally spent as he watched it limp away.

People cheered when they realized the thing had limped off and away. They cheered even more when they realized no one had been hurt or killed. Miles was heartily thanked and slapped on the back and shoulders as he entered the compound. He smiled. He grinned wider when his new wife grabbed his face with both hands and landed a passionate kiss on his lips. That got a laugh from the group.

\------{}------/

When the familiar glowing jellyfish arrived Miles stood firm, ignoring the moans. “What the hell do they want now?” Moira demanded.

“Trouble,” Ciara said. Mya nodded. All eyes were on the sky as more and more of the creatures appeared. Then there was a flash and they were transported to another plane.

Miles felt vertigo hit him. When he recovered he looked around and was surprised by the number of people there. Most were adults or teens, but there were a few kids, some babies like his daughter Ciara was holding on her hip. He nodded to her. She nodded back.

He turned, pursing his lips. He reached down but his familiar weapon was missing. That caused him to scowl. Then he noticed groups of people wandering about talking to others.

“Rodrigo,” he said, pulling his second-in-command over.

“Yes, jefe?” Diego, Carlos, Jesus, and Chico came over as well.

“Go get the others to talk with the people, find out where they are, landmarks and shit. See what they know,” he said quietly. Rodrigo looked at him. “No, not for that,” Miles said, looking guiltily up to the floating things above. He wasn't sure if they read minds or not. “No...trade and info,” he said. Rodrigo nodded.