Hell on Earth Page 7

  I winked. “We’ve been preparing for this sort of war for a long time, my friend . . . we just never realized we’d be fighting literal demons!”

  “Jesus . . . who were you expecting to fight?”

  The blasphemy angered me, but I let it slide. He was an unbeliever and might not even realize what he’d said. “Exactly who we are fighting; the forces of Mammon. We’d hoped to avert the crisis by engaging in the world, steering it toward the righteousness of the Constitution ordained by God Himself in 1787. We sent our members out into the world, joined the Army, the FBI, the Washington power structure. We increased our numbers within the IRS and even within NASA. But in the end, all that effort bought us only advance warning and some spies and saboteurs within the enemy ranks.”

  Fly shook his head, dazed. He said nothing.

  “Now we are the last stronghold in the continental United States. There is but one major enclave left on the planet for humans and the godly; there centers the Resistance.”

  “Where?”

  I chuckled. “Even if I knew, Fly, I wouldn’t tell you. Your interest rate on keeping secrets isn’t very high right now.”

  He smiled sardonically. “I guess I wouldn’t tell you either, if you’d just done what we did. What I did.”

  “We,” corrected Arlene. “You were right the first time. I stood right beside you and helped you report to Karapetian.”

  He shrugged, neither confirming nor denying.

  “Are there plans to get to the Resistance?”

  “If there are, we haven’t executed them yet. We can send brief messages—too quick to triangulate or decrypt. But we can’t send people.”

  “Why not?”

  “There is some sort of energy barrier that prevents us from leaving the continent . . . and at times, even from leaving an urban center. Los Angeles has one; you cannot fly from L.A. to anywhere else unless the demons drop the wall—which they do only for their own, of course.”

  “But if you go around the barrier?”

  “We’ve tried; we can’t find an edge. It seems to be everywhere. What we need to do is find the source or the control center and shut it off. At least long enough to get our people out, join up with the Resistance. Otherwise, eventually, we will fall; we have years worth of food and medicine, but not decades worth. And after a while they will mass enough troops against us to overrun us in any case.

  “Worst-case scenario, you two, we lose this city after a four-month siege. That’s if they throw everything in the world at us.”

  “Are you kidding?” demanded an incredulous Arlene. “What about missiles? Nuclear bombs dropped from airplanes?”

  “Our agents were heavily involved in the Strategic Defense Initiative . . . remember?” I winked. “And we have anti-air defenses too. We’re not worried about nukes; we’re more worried about tanks and undead soldiers. None of our defenses were erected with molochs in mind.”

  “Molochs?”

  “What you called steam-demons, I believe.”

  Suddenly, the radio phone buzzed. The radioman answered, listened for a moment, saying a string of “yessirs.” He turned to me. “Albert, the President wants to see your charges.”

  “Now?”

  “Tonight. The captain says he has a mission for them . . . something to prove themselves after their incompetence . . . no offense, guys; I’m just quoting.”

  “None taken,” said Arlene, highly offended. My eyes began to dwell longingly on her curves and swells again, and I brutally forced my gaze to the dead and wounded littering the battlefield . . . even their dead. The corpsmen were already busy, collecting the casualties for transportation to hospital.

  “Got a time?” I asked.

  “Eighteen hundred,” said the radioman. I didn’t know his name, even though he knew mine; it made me uncomfortable.

  I nodded. “Okay, you heard the man. Fly, Arlene, start polishing your brass. We’ve got three hours before your mission briefing. And guys?”

  They waited expectantly.

  “Try not to hose it up. This time.”

  Arlene Sanders flipped me the finger; but Fly just looked down at his boots, brushing the mud off with his hands.

  11

  Arlene, Albert, and I sat in our little room like old friends. “Albert, you were right,” I said. “We should have asked you before charging off to report to Karapetian.”

  “The fact that you had to sneak around and concoct an absurd fairy tale should have told you something,” he said, smiling faintly. I caught Arlene looking at him with an interest I hadn’t seen in her eyes since she first began getting close to old Dodd. Could she . . . ?

  Nah; that was a silly thought. Not with how she felt about religion in general—and Mormons in particular. Not after her brother.

  She spoke, her voice tight and controlled. “Albert, can you tell us what on Earth happened? I mean here on Earth.”

  “Gladly,” said Albert.

  Evidently, even with only half an invasion force, the urban areas of Earth had fallen quickly. Albert suspected that high-ranking U.S. government officials and their counterparts in other governments, the federal and state agencies and even the services themselves—the U.S. Marine Corps!—actually collaborated with the aliens.

  I guess there wasn’t much argument I could make . . . not after seeing living human beings on the march against us in the siege. If I cared to climb up to the roof, I could see them still. I didn’t care to.

  The monsters promised a peaceful occupation and promised each collaborator that his own government would be given the top command slot. A tried and true approach, with plenty of terrestrial examples: it worked for Hitler and Stalin; now it worked for a bunch of plug-uglies from beyond the planets.

  Naturally, the aliens screwed the traitors, killing hundreds of millions . . . utterly destroying Washington, D.C., and demolishing much of New York, Paris, Moscow, and Beijing. The Mormons knew the invaders were really serious when all the stock exchanges were wiped out in two hours.

  “They control all the big cities now,” Albert reported.

  “So at least some things will feel the same,” said Arlene. Our newfound friend laughed uproariously. He was taking to Arlene’s morbid brand of humor.

  “What’s the Resistance like?” she asked, hanging on his every word. I started to resent her interest. Maybe I was only her “big brother,” but shouldn’t that count for something?

  Albert turned up his hands. “How should I know? We know only that they exist, and they have a lot of science types, techies. They’re working on stuff all the time . . . but so far, they haven’t been able to shut off the energy wall from outside—and the only way to get to it from the inside is to mount an assault . . . or infiltrate.”

  “Maybe that’s what the President wants us to do,” I speculated; I don’t think Albert had any more idea than I, though.

  Jerry joined us again; now he too was in a dark suit, though still heavily armed with a Browning Automatic Rifle. It reminded me of a “Family” war between Mafia soldiers. I began to feel distinctly underdressed.

  “What about the countryside?” I asked.

  Albert nodded and answered: “That’s the local resistance, such as it is. At least we are not alone. For a little longer, at least.”

  Jerry volunteered a comment: “They seem more interested in taking slaves from the rural areas than conquering the territory.”

  Albert concurred: “It gives us a fighting chance, they being so slow expanding their pale.”

  “What is this ‘special wisdom’ the President offered to share before the attack?” I asked. “Can you give us a hint?”

  Albert and Jerry exchanged the look of comrades in arms. “Don’t worry about it,” said Albert. “He’s less worried about what you know than what you see.”

  Albert insisted that Arlene and I rest and bathe. The only choice offered was a cold shower, but that was fine with us. We found clean clothes.

  Then we got the “fifty-ce
nt-tour” from Albert, the tour that wouldn’t get him in trouble.

  Albert took us down to the hidden catacombs they’d constructed beneath the Tabernacle complex. The trip began with an elevator ride. The metal was shiny and new. Everything was air-conditioned. The doors slid open to reveal something out of the latest James Bond movie. But somehow I was not surprised at the vast complex they had constructed. We walked under a gigantic V arch to bear witness to dozens of miles of secret shelters. We were not taken behind the locked doors to see the contents, but Albert told us they had millions of rounds of ammunition, stores, heavy military equipment, a whole factory, and more. It was survivalist heaven.

  “I wonder what kind of heavy equipment?” Arlene whispered in my ear.

  “Tanks and Humvees,” I whispered back. “The rest when he trusts us.”

  “I’m sure he’ll trust us plenty after we’ve died for the cause,” she concluded.

  “Can’t hardly blame him.” I could kick myself for such self-pity, but I couldn’t get my stupidity out of my mind.

  We took a turn in the passageway and reached another elevator marked for five more levels down. “Jesus!” said Arlene, followed by: “Sorry, Albert.”

  He only shook his head. Even Albert was probably cutting her some slack for being female. Arlene could always sense a patronizing attitude, but she had too much class to throw it back at someone working so hard to play fair with her.

  “Why would you have all this?” she asked.

  He didn’t hesitate in answering, “To equalize our relations with the IRS.”

  “Man, all I had was Melrose Larry Green, CPA,” marveled Arlene.

  “I’ll let both of you in on something,” he said, “because it hardly matters today. All you saw today were ground troops; but did you know the IRS had its own ‘Delta Force,’ the Special Revenue Collection Division?”

  We shook our heads, but once again I wasn’t really surprised. “In case of another Whiskey Rebellion?” I guessed.

  “An interesting way of putting it,” he said, and continued: “They had an infantry division, two armored cav regiments, a hidden fast-attack submarine, a heavy bomber wing, and from what I hear, a carrier battle group.”

  Somebody whistled. It was Yours Truly. If the Mormons knew about that, could they have wound up with some of it? This was an obvious thought, and would make full use of an installation this size; but I wasn’t going to ask. Arlene and I were lucky to be learning this much.

  “How’d they finance it?” I asked.

  “The IRS can finance anything?” suggested Arlene, as if a student in school.

  “Well, even they had to cover their tracks,” said Albert. “Jerry thinks they hid the military buildup inside the fictitious budget deficit. Unfortunately, the Special Revenue Collection Division was seized by the demons.”

  “Aliens,” Arlene corrected, almost unconsciously.

  “Whatever.”

  This seemed a good moment to clear up the nomenclature: “Actually, Albert, we named the different kinds of aliens to keep them separate. We call the dumb pink ones the demons.”

  “How did the aliens get their claws on all that IRS equipment?” Arlene asked.

  “Hm. Because Internal Revenue was the very first group to sell out Earth,” he answered. This was definitely not a day of surprises.

  “Do we get to ride on the other elevator?” I asked.

  “Later,” he said. “And I’m sorry I can’t show you behind the doors.”

  “No, you’ve been great, Albert,” said Arlene. I could tell she was impressed for real, no joke. This was rare. “Why don’t you tell us about your checkered military past?”

  “That’s next on the agenda,” he said, “and the President will want to brief you on the mission, if he’s picked it yet.”

  We took the elevator back up to face the boss. I promised myself that no matter how much I wanted to do it, I wouldn’t say, “Howdy, pardner.”

  Three more bodyguards surrounded the President. These guys didn’t seem friendly like Albert or Jerry. He led us to the auxiliary command center (I supposed the real command center was at the bottom level of the complex), where we learned that the nearest nerve center of the alien invasion was Los Angeles. The monsters had set up their ultra-advanced computer services and war technology center near the HOLLYWOOD sign. I didn’t want to ask who sold out humanity there. I was afraid to find out.

  The President didn’t waste time coming to the point: “Two highly trained Marines who fought the enemy to a standstill in space; then floated down out of orbit, would be better qualified to lead a certain mission we have in mind than our own people. This is assuming that we haven’t been subject to a certain degree of exaggeration. A man and a woman alone could only be expected to do so much against hundreds of the enemy.”

  Arlene was behaving herself, but it dawned on me that I hadn’t made any promises to keep my mouth shut. This wasn’t about religion. This was about doubting our word after we’d swum through a world of hurt to get this far.

  I reminded myself that we needed this man; I reminded myself we’d already hosed the job . . . but stupidity had nothing to do with dishonor!

  “If the two of you could get to Los Angeles,” the leader continued, “and make it into the computer system, download full specs on their most basic technology, and get it back to the United States War Technology Center, it would aid our defense immeasurably.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The War Tech Center was created a few weeks ago, hidden—west of here. You’ll be told where when the need arises. When you get the download.”

  I thought for a moment. It couldn’t be as far as Japan or China; Beijing and Tokyo were both destroyed. He must mean Hawaii.

  I couldn’t resist being a smart-ass; the President brought that out in people. “It’s either Wheeler AFB, Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps Air Station, or Barber’s Point Naval Air Station, all on Oahu,” I declared. “Do I win anything?”

  “I love Hawaii!” said Arlene. “Great weather. Hardly any humidity.”

  “But those prices,” I answered.

  It was a trivial little protest against the man’s pomposity and skepticism, but it made us feel a whole lot better.

  “Please,” said the President, his face turning positively florid. “As I was saying, if you can penetrate the enemy stronghold and bring the specs to the U.S. technology center, there are scientists there who can do something with it. We have refugees from ARPA, the Lockheed ‘skunk works,’ NASA, MacDAC, hackers from many places.” It sounded to me like the President of the Twelve had been boning up on other subjects besides theology . . . and finance. “Has Albert told you about the force field?”

  “He said something about an energy wall.”

  “You have to find a way to shut it off . . . otherwise, you’re not going anywhere. You get offshore about fifteen miles, then call an encrypted message in. We’ll vector you to the War Technology Center.”

  “If we can pull this off,” said Arlene in her serious, engineer’s tone of voice, “and a computer expert can dehack the alien technology, we might come up with shields against them. Defenses, something.”

  “The first problem is to crack Los Angeles,” said the President.

  “Then we’re your best bet,” I said. “After Phobos and Deimos, how bad can L.A. be?” Even at the time, this sounded like famous last words.

  “Yes, my point exactly,” he agreed languidly, still frosted; “how much simpler this would have to be than the Deimos situation.” He paused long enough to annoy us again. “This is more than a two-man operation.” Translation: we needed keepers. Well, that was all right with me. “You’ll be infiltrating, so we’re not talking about a strike force here.”

  “Stealth mission,” said Arlene.

  “Two more people would be about right,” I said.

  The President’s first choice was excellent. Albert wanted to go. “By way of apology for being the one to turn you in,�
�� he said, holding out his big paw of a hand. I took it gingerly; he hardly had anything to apologize for. He winked.

  “If you’d been one fraction less of a hard-ass, I wouldn’t want you on this mission anyway.”

  “This is probably a good time to tell you about Albert’s record,” said the President. “He was a PFC in the Marine Corps, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear. Honorably discharged. He won a medal for his MOS.” Military operational specialty.

  “Which was?” I asked Albert, eye-to-eye.

  “A sniper, Corporal,” he answered. “Bronze star, Colombia campaign. Drug wars.”

  “Sniper school?”

  “Of course.”

  “God bless,” said Arlene.

  Albert was fine; we both dug Albert. Couldn’t say the same about the second choice, who Nate ushered into the ops room: she looked like a fourteen-year-old girl in T-shirt, jeans, and dirty sneakers.

  “Fly,” Arlene said, staring, “does my promise apply to bitching about personnel decisions?”

  “Say your piece.”

  She shook her head in incredulity. “I’d never have expected this kind of crap from this bunch of sexist—”

  “Uh, no offense,” I mumbled to the President, feeling pretty lame. My face flushed red-hot, as if I’d just taken niacin.

  He chose to ignore the editorial. “I hate sending her. Unfortunately, she’s the best qualified.”

  Arlene stared at the girl, a foxy little item ready to stare back. “I never thought I’d say these words,” Arlene began, “but there’s a first time for everything. Honey—”

  “My name is Jill,” she said defiantly.

  “Okay, Jill. Listen closely. Please don’t take offense, but this is no job for a girl.”

  “I have to go,” she said. “Live with it.”

  “Honey, I don’t want to die with it.”

  “What’s this joke?” I demanded.

  “I told you. She’s the best, uh, hacker, I think it is, that we’ve got. But you deserve an explanation.” He turned to her and asked, “Do you mind if I tell them?” She shrugged. He went on: “I apologize for her sullen attitude.”

  I don’t know about Arlene, but I didn’t see anything sullen about the kid. The President never seemed to look directly at her but kind of sideways.