CHAPTER 60

Sergeant Breathed put the phone down and yelled across the TOC, “Major, Captain Mack’s patrol just passed the outer perimeter. They’re heading into to the woods sir.”

Ed Lewis then pointed to their half ass maps, “if she makes contact it’s going to be somewhere right in here.”

Phil looked at that map and then sighed, “if we’re lucky and, so far, I wouldn’t call anything we’ve had, luck.” Phil asked his Sergeant, “did you notify Delta that they had friendlies crossing their fire zone?”

Breathed sounded sure enough, “talked to Kholer myself.”

“Not good enough,” Phil said as he picked up his helmet. “It’s darker out there than normal. I’m walking over there and going to tell the positions myself. We’ve had enough casualties already without taking friendly fire by a simple fuck up.”

Lewis chuckled, “you really don’t trust that kid, do you?”

Phil strapped down his helmet and went to pick up his weapon, “I just don’t trust our luck, Ed, and Delta’s has some of the worst of it.”

Phil looked down over the sandbags that his weapon was stacked against. Ted Washburn was down there in the cubby hole. He was working but, the guy had not come out of that hole since the dinosaur nearly flattened him. Phil asked in his usual monotone way, “you know Ted. Sooner or later you’re going to have to go to the bathroom. You do not have permission to do it there.”

“Yes sir,” Ted replied as if he really did not mean it and, Phil suspected, the guy did not. Could he really blame Washburn?

Phil decided it was not worth worrying about now. He left the TOC and half way across the camp, he heard shooting erupt, somewhere, out beyond the perimeter. It’s intensity went up and down, several times, before Phil reached Delta companies command post.

Kholer was there and taking a string of contact reports that were rolling in on all of his phones. Phil had to admit the boy looked to be doing a pretty descent job of it. He was not really excited, he was calling out to his people as he should, and then he noticed Phil. The boy suddenly got nervous and began stumbling over his words, “uh, Major, we got…”

“You’re doing fine son,” Phil told the boy before asking, “who’s got a bead on the fight?”

“Uh,” Kholer pointed to the maps and said “Vega’s platoon there, sir. They can see the tracers and are getting indirect fire from…” The booming sound of the battalion mortar section interrupted the answer and, at the same time, was the answer. Kholer noted, “Vega called in a fire mission.”

Phil nodded, “she’s got eyes on bad guys then?”

“Yes sir,” Kholer replied, “um, those cameras of hers and…”

“Good job son,” Phil looked to all of the faces in the bunker. How had he never seen it before. They were a bunch of damn kids. Those faces were so fresh it made Phil hurt looking at them. They were also scared out of their minds but, more important, they were all doing their jobs despite these handicaps. Phil expanded his statement, “you’re all doing yourselves proud. Stick to it and we’ll walk away from this one. I’m going to join Lieutenant Vega.”

By the time Phil crawled up to the forward observation post, something that he found himself getting just a little too old for, the shooting had slowed down considerably. Phil still stayed in the dirt as he slid over the lip of the hole and down between Vega and Taylor. They were both watching their video feed and acting almost like it was a ball game. Phil had to poke Vega in the arm before she realized who he was. She looked surprised and scrambled to say something but Phil just calmly asked, “sitrep Lieutenant?”

Ben Taylor replied, “our guys walked right into what looks like an ambush. It was like the Orcs came right out of the ground. I mean it was like an army of fucking ants, that thick.”

Now Phil was seriously concerned. Katie had nearly half her company out there but, from the sounds of it, they encountered a far larger force than Phil thought even possible. He quickly asked, “what’s their status?”

Vega finally spoke, “held their own sir.”

Ben corrected her, “they got lucky is what happened. It looked like the Orcs had them in a vice and then a whole mob of them things over ran our obstacles and tripped off nearly every claymore we had down there on the right flank.”

Vega finished with, “then I called in the mortars and scattered that whole crew. That let our guys concentrate on the ones in the middle. They got them in a crossfire and then cut ‘em to fucking pieces, um, sir.”

That was some good news anyway. Phil still didn’t know what he wanted too, “why have they stopped shooting?”

Ben Taylor shrugged, “the Orcs just vanished.”

“Contact front,” Vega huffed out. She then grabbed the phone and called the holes down her line, “check your fire people. We got friendly’s to our front!”

After taking a quick look Taylor said, “that’s definitely a friendly. I know him.” Ben yelled out, “Scoggins, over here!” When Ben dropped back down he saw all eyes on him and he explained, “Bravo Company, he’s on the softball team.” They seemed to accept that and all three looked out next. Scoggins had crawled through the wire and cleared it. Then he got up and ran right at them. Three flashes in the darkness were followed by his body completely turning into flying liquid that sprayed them with a sticky soup.

Lolita dropped back down in the hole and was more angry than anything else, “this is fucking gross!”

Phil was busy wiping his face so that he could see and before he was even finished he heard the shooting begin again. He knew he needed to do something but, he would have to be back at battalion if he was going to be useful. He was about to get out of the hole.

At the same time Taylor was plugging his helmet back in to the camera feed. Vega was still angry and she grabbed for her phone once more, “all positions, light those fuckers up!”

Phil wondered if he should really be saying something about all of this and, again, it occurred to him that he was not in his place. He slid out of the hole when Vega’s platoon started filling the darkness with tracer rounds. Then the ground rumbled so hard that Phil found himself being bounced off of it by the vibrations. This was no mortar strike. It was not even artillery fire! It was not even those huge shells that the Orcs loved. This was an earth quake!

The rumbling did not stop, even if the worst of the vibrations did. The sound was so loud that Phil could not even hear himself think. He actually stood up and looked around. The noise seemed to be coming from everywhere. It was having the same effect on everyone else too. Phil noticed that heads were popping up out of holes. Back in the camp people were rushing out of bunkers, all looking for what this massive noise was. Were they being nuked? Did the Orc’s have nukes? Phil wondered if he was about to die and, the answer he kept coming up with was, yep.

His eye caught sight of the movement in the least likely of places. It was high in the tree line. Was there some monster, Godzilla, thing coming through the trees? That almost sounded like a joke but, Phil was learning that in this place, anything was possible. Yet, it was not what he saw tearing down at him. Smaller trees began to snap like twigs, the branches of bigger ones were torn away in a whirl wind. The roaring grew louder and it was quickly followed by a growing cloud of dust. Then Phil saw the huge trunk falling towards the camp. It was a tree and it had to be that big one, the one that was easily the size of the a New York skyscraper. It was headed right for the center of camp.

Phil managed to get out the words, “oh shit.” No one could probably hear him but, somebody did notice him standing there. Phil felt himself grabbed and thrown down on the ground. A body landed on him just as the ground shook like it was another tremor. The rumbling turned into an explosion and that was followed by even more explosions that were not quite as loud but frequently going off like an oversized string of firecrackers. None of it seemed to matter as Phil had to fight to breath. The air was filled with dust and ash that worked the lungs and nauseated the senses. Then the debris started falling. At first it was just little pings on the ground, like hail. It quickly turned into smoldering projectiles coming down at lethal speeds.

That was why Phil wasted no time rolling out when the weight came off of him. He could see very little because of the darkness, the dust, the smoke, and whatever else this cloud was. The way Phil had it figured, the only good news was, he was unlikely to live long enough to die of cancer from everything he was inhaling right now. He hacked as he staggered around and then he saw the face of Sergeant Taylor. The guy put Phil’s arm over his shoulder and Vega came up on the other side. They pulled Phil along towards their hole.

When they reached the observation post, their journey seemed to be for nothing. The hole had collapsed in on itself. Ben released the Major and Phil nodded to Vega that he could support his own weight. The dust was still filling the air but, at least, the noise was not so ‘end of the world’ anymore. Things were actually starting to get rather still and Phil realized, “I have to get back to the TOC.”

“No sir,” Taylor told him. He pointed to the big dark object that looked like a small mountain and stretched out past the east side of the camp to the well past the western perimeter. It wasn’t there a few minutes ago and that made Phil realize what Taylor had just told him, “it’s not there anymore Major.”

A new round of shooting began somewhere, out in the darkness of the forest. Phil knew who was in that direction. He also knew, “that’s Katie. They were outside the perimeter. They probably got missed by the tree.”

Vega snapped, “company CP?”

Ben shook his head, “it’s gone too. Hell I can’t even see it now.”

Phil hacked up what felt like half a lung and then said, “I can’t see anything right now ether, let alone…”

The zipping sound was followed by a hard thud. Vega was the first to locate the source. She ran over to Taylor who was on the ground trying to pull at the giant sliver of wood that was lodged in his throat. As Taylor slowly lost the battle, gurgling and grasping for whatever he could, Lolita knelt over him trying to pound on his chest and even give him CPR, as she screamed, “BEN!!! NO!!!”

Phil felt ashamed of a lot of things right now. He felt ashamed of having such a danger literally staring at him every morning since they first got here, and not understanding that it even was a danger. He felt ashamed for having had his first battalion command wiped out in the blink of an eye. He even felt of ashamed for being alive. What bothered him the most though, was that, right now, he didn’t care about any of that. He looked down at that dying man and his only thought was that this scene was repeating itself all across the firebase. That meant they were sitting ducks and more would die if he didn’t act.

Phil reached down and grabbed the sobbing Lieutenant and pulled her up to her feet. He slapped the young girl and then told her, “he’s gone Lieutenant! You got people who are still alive. Get them organized now! I doubt…”

As if on cue, the growing silence was interrupted by the unearthly moans that seemed to drift right out of the trees. Vega had experienced a lot of emotions in rapid succession and, now, she felt another coming on and it was stronger than all the rest. It was sheer terror, “what the hell is that?”

“Enemy bugles,” Phil replied with as much authority as he could muster. “They’re coming Lieutenant. Get me a firing line in position. Be ready to bug out as soon as you see my flare.”

As Phil walked off, Vega squeaked “where are we going?”

Phil yelled back, “alternate eLZee, three clicks south of here. It’s the emergency rally point.”

Phil picked up the pace and was in a near sprint, headed for what used to be the central part of his firebase. He heard a new round of shooting, coming from an entirely different direction. It started up before he had even reached this huge instant wall that the tree made. Unfortunately, the firing was on the other side of it. That meant Charlie company were the ones doing the shooting. All of that fire was mixed with the sounds of those Orc horns blaring. Strangely enough, Phil did not hear the very distinct sound of their staff weapons. It made him realize that he had to find out what was going on over there but, he could not see a way around the remains of this damn tree. It looked more like the Great Wall of China! What was left of the task force was literally cut in half!

What Phil did see was a small ray of light in what was literally a dark cloud. The air was clearing enough to see a little further than just past your hands. In a break through the haze, Phil saw Ed Lewis on a litter with a medic trying to do something to his leg. Phil ran to the Sergeant Major, “what happened?”

“Morphine,” Ed replied.

The medic got snitty, “you’ve had enough Sergeant Major.”

“No,” Ed was loopy, “I mean that’s what happened, morphine.”

Several flares popped and flew off into the air. Their sparking could be seen, even through the debris cloud. Phil took that to mean he still had some communications left. That was the good side though. The bad news was that those flares were calling for fire missions on pre-designated points that were around the perimeter. His people were seeing the enemy and none of the mortars were firing in response.

The medic looked to be finished but, was most definitely not satisfied with her work. She looked to the Major, “he took a splinter when the tree came down. A big one. It went right through. I cleaned it and stitched it as best I can but… I… Sir…”

Phil turned on his monotone, “you did a good job Specialist. Now get a littler, round up as many people as you can, take the Sergeant Major and head for the rally point. We are leaving, now.”

The girl was scared. She seemed able to handle herself while she was working but, now that she was finished, she had time to think. The fear was taking over and she seemed almost paralyzed. Phil kept his voice as calm as he could manage and told the little girl, “we still have plenty of wounded. You have your orders Specialist, follow them.” She began yelling for others around them and, she got moving. Now, Phil realized, he was going to have to do that a few more hundred times if he wanted to save what was left of the battalion.

As Phil ran along the remains of the tree, passing the word to anyone he could find, he heard another set of moaning horns begin to blare. These were uncomfortably close and, unexpectedly, they were coming from just above him! Phil looked up and that’s when he got his first close up look at an Orc of the Polmarij. It was sliding down a rope that was being joined by even more falling ropes. Phil had seen pictures of these things but, nothing like what landed on the ground in front of him. It had armor? It’s torso was covered with a vest and it even wore a helmet that, while bigger than anything a human would wear, did not look too different in design from what Phil had on.

Phil had heard about that stuff so it was not too surprising. What made him freeze, almost to the point of being lethal for him, was the thing it wore over it’s face. It looked like some kind of weird new fad goggles. It bulged at the eyes and Phil could not even understand how the damn could see with it on, yet it saw Phil well enough, too good in fact. It began to swing it’s staff with that huge axe blade on the end of it. Phil could image it splitting him completely in half.

The magazine on his M-4 ran dry too quickly. It all happened so fast that Phil was not even sure how many times he had pulled the trigger. He was also too stunned to notice that he had not killed it. The thing was now, not only deadly but, pissed off. It’s face was all scarred, it’s armor looked a little bit more worn, it had been distracted but, it was still ready to kill him.

This time, when it raised it’s weapon, the next round of bullets that it met came from somewhere else. Phil forgot to move and he was pretty sure he wet his pants. The thing was now squealing for dear life and thrashing around on the ground. Phil began to feel his senses returning and that was when he saw Lieutenant Vega and Delta’s First Sergeant Rodriquez. They both had M-60 machineguns and were hosing down the top of the tree.

Phil ran behind them so he would be out of the field of fire. Then he saw what they were shooting at. The Orc’s were coming right down the fallen tree and repelling right into the middle of the camp. They were drawing fire from every direction but, too Phil’s sorrow, that fire was rather weak and sporadic. It was certainly not going to stop this new attack right in their gut.

Phil slapped Vega on the arm and said, “why aren’t you at your position?”

“Over run Major,” Vega said. “I got what’s left of Delta now. Afraid we only got twenty-two shooters left, sir.”

“That’s it then,” Phil reached into his vest and pulled out his flare gun. He motioned for his two gunners to start backing up with him, and as they slowly retreated, shooting at the new wave of monsters, Phil fired three flares into the air. It was the signal he never seriously thought he would have to send up. He then told Vega, “we’re getting out of here now.”

Rodriquez yelled out over his fire, “hope we got a place to go sir!” Hap stop shooting. He collapsed to the ground in a sea of accumulating fluids.

Vega screamed in anger and then depressed the trigger of her weapon as she slung the barrel around. She ran out of ammunition and then dumped M-60 before pulling out her side arm. She would have ran it’s magazine dry but Phil grabbed her by the shoulder and began pulling her as he ran. She still kept trying to shoot back.

When they both ran out of breath, they found a hole, what had been a bunker full of people, and jumped in it. Phil tried to take stock of the rapidly deteriorating situation. He now realized he was commanding nothing at all. His only task left was to get out of here alive.

Vega must have reached the same conclusion. She was obviously angry about it too, “is this it? This can’t fucking be it! Is it over?”

Phil saw a possible escape route out of the perimeter. It was too the south and that was the direction they wanted to go. He grabbed Vega once more but, this time she pulled away and said, “If I’m dying I’m going to kill as many of those things as I can! They ain’t taking me alive!”

Phil composed himself and went back to his monotone routine, “don’t worry Lieutenant. I got a feeling this thing is just getting started.”