Darren Wearmouth - Critical Dawn

“None that I can see.”

Charlie crawled a further few feet and pressed himself against the trunk of a giant redwood that wasn’t there a decade ago. Since the mini ice age burned off, the growth of trees and plants had increased at an explosive rate, fuelled by the croatoans’ introduced farming, which seemed to cultivate the atmosphere.

Looking through a thick bush, parting the leaves a few inches, Charlie saw them. Den was right; there were just two of them. They were small like the harvester’s pilots, but these wore the helmets and backpacks that recycled oxygen, enriching it with their chemicals. He heard their clicking, percussive language as they took a series of soil samples. They were identifying new routes for harvesting.

The only problem was that they were right above one of Charlie and Den’s shelters.

Within the trees and bushes, the remnants of a town showed through in places: old apartment buildings that had collapsed, sending concrete and steel to the ground, now reclaimed by nature.

His shelter was actually the basement of what used to be a three-story commercial building. From his position, he could just make out the southern wall. It collapsed years ago, leaving only a crumbled reminder of its previous use.

If one of the surveyors found his shelter, that traitor bastard Gregor would have the place carpet-bombed, especially now that Charlie had taken out another of his harvesters. His quotas would be way down, and he’d face increasing pressure from the administrators.

Charlie heard movement from behind. He spun round to find Ben crouching beside him. “What’s happening?” Ben said.

“Get down, you fool,” Charlie whispered between gritted teeth. He grabbed the idiot and pulled him away from the bush. Leaning close to his ear, Charlie added, “Give me the pistol you took. Do it quietly.”

Ben handed Charlie the croatoan pistol with a shaking hand. Charlie handed it to Denver, who took it with saying a word. “Now be quiet and don’t move,” Charlie said.

To Denver: “Take the one on the right after three. Headshot preferable.”

“Okay, Dad.” Denver buried his foot into the dirt, pressed his shoulder against a tree for support, and aimed the pistol through a gap in the bush.

The surveyor on the left hand side used a small control panel that resembled a TV remote made from glass to raise a five-foot-tall metal tube used to analyze the soil. The tube extended out of the ground, held up by a tripod of thin croatoan metal.

Charlie grinned. That would make a fine weapon. With a little heat, their metal could be shaped and sharpened to a razor’s edge like Den’s machete. That used to be one of the alien scums’ backpacks.

When the two surveyors faced each other to discuss their findings, Charlie extended his rifle through the foliage of the bush and brought the scope up to his eye. With his quarry in sight, Charlie whispered, “One… two… three…” Two shots fired simultaneously, his shot muffled by a suppressor, the alien pistol making an ear-popping, low hum.

Checking with his scope, Charlie saw both aliens lying on the ground, the shells of their helmets shattered.

Pip growled low.

“Shit, we’ve got company,” Den said, pointing upwards.

Charlie looked up and saw the shadow of a hover-bike fly overhead. Damn it, they were quicker this time. They had to get to the shelter before the scouts landed; they wouldn’t survive a full assault on their own. Perhaps if it were just Charlie and Den, but not with these lambs holding them back.

Leaping to his feet, Charlie turned to Ben and the others. He shouted, “Follow me, now, sprint!” He dashed through the bush and sprinted forward, leaving everyone but Den behind. He leapt over fallen trees and thick roots until he came to the surveyors. He and Den took one each, lifting them on their shoulders.

“Grab the gear and follow me,” Charlie shouted to Ben and the others.

The whine of hover-bikes came from a hundred feet or so away. The GPS chips within the lambs would give their general position away, but below a hundred-foot-radius, Charlie’s scramblers within the shelter would make it difficult for them to pinpoint them.

At the very least, it’d buy them time to get set for a fight.

The crumbled wall lay just a few feet away. Charlie dashed forward and dumped the body at its base. Den followed. When the others caught up, Charlie pushed them along the wall until they came to an old tree. He rolled it away to reveal a hole in the ground. “Get down there,” he said, pushing them in. Ethan and Maria had brought the tubes and tripods and handed them to Charlie and Den as they descended underground.

“In you go, son,” Charlie said, waiting for Den and Pip to follow inside.

“They’ll be more this time,” Denver said before he went inside.

“I know. We’ll figure something out.”

Den nodded and smiled. “You always do.” He scrambled inside the hole with the agility of a weasel.

Charlie laid the equipment at the base of the wall and, along with the bodies, covered them with foliage. He heard the guttural clicks and grunts of the croatoan scouts. Looking through a gap in the wall where a tree’s branch had penetrated, he saw a squad of three armed with rifles scan the area. The lead grunt wore a gold-sheened-visor—one of Gregor’s personal crew—and referred to a wrist-mounted locator.

They wouldn’t be able to stay in the shelter long. They’d update their location, and others would arrive. They would soon be found. Charlie slowly backed away from the wall and made his way to the hole that led into the old building’s basement.

Crawling into the darkness, he reached up and rolled the trunk back over just as the sound of yet more hover-bikes landed to the south of their position.

This was not going well.

Gregor Miralos threw a blanket to one side, splashed his face with stagnant water from the bedroom sink, and sprayed his armpits with a rusty can of deodorant—his typical morning routine. Dressed in only a towel, he fried a breakfast of fresh salmon left on his kitchen counter by one of his team. Despite a few hiccups, for the last two months, the North American operation was going well.

The salmon started to blacken. He scraped pieces onto a plate with a spatula and took the dish to his office, placing it on his desk.

He sat in a brown leather chair and caressed the mahogany arms, enjoying the squeaking friction against his back.

Scanning three croatoan-installed screens on his desk while tossing chunks of salmon into his mouth, Gregor checked the productivity statistics against operational harvesters in the field. The results were at least on par with other continents, if not slightly better.

He looked around the office, the main room in a sparse one-bedroom house on the edge of the croatoan camp. Whitewashed walls and furniture he’d looted from local derelict buildings. The aliens supplied power and water from their centralized source.

This place was better than the trailer at the last location, but he thought it was time for an upgrade. He wanted the top job of global director, currently taken by Mr. Augustus. Gregor knew that asshole lived in luxury.

The front door rattled against the jam three times.

“Enter,” Gregor shouted.

Alex, his temporary second-in-command, opened the door and entered the room, stopping short of the desk. She fidgeted with a drawstring at the bottom of her yellow waterproof jacket and wiped a thin covering of sweat off her brow.

“Good morning, Gregor—”

“Cut the shit. What have you come to tell me?” Gregor half-closed his eyes, looking Alex up and down. Thirty years ago, Alex could light up a room with her rich dark brown, wavy hair and glamorous features. Today, she looked old, concerned, her graying hair in a tight ponytail. “Spit it out.”