Marko Kloos - Terms of Enlistment

“Get the fuck back,” one of the Marines shouts. “It’s getting back up.”

The Marines cramble back from the edge of the roof. A pair of hands grabs the collar of my borrowed Marine fatigues, and I turn my head to see Halley crouching over me.

“Let’s go, Mister,” she shouts.

To our right, the two other fireteams failed to duplicate even our modest and temporary little victory. The two creatures that made up the center of the alien line have reached the building. The shield-like tops of their heads just barely clear the edge of the roof, but their long forelimbs can reach way beyond it. I see a three-fingered hand coming over the rooftop ledge and clawing into the rubber coating of the roof, the structure underneath yielding to the grasp of the enormous hand like the metal foil cover on a meal tray. The other creature doesn’t even bother with such a probing approach. It merely brings down a huge arm on top of the roof, where it lands with a bang that sounds like an exploding artillery shell. This time, everyone left standing on the roof is knocked to the ground. Over to our right, there’s suddenly a trench in the roof between us and the spot where Commander Campbell and Sergeant Becker’s fireteam took up position.

I scramble to my feet and pull Halley along with me. The surface of the roof is now slanted toward the spot where the alien creature tore a gash into the rooftop. My rifle lies on the ground a few yards away, but when I start toward it, the creature we downed just a few moments ago reaches over the edge of the roof and buries its three fingers in the rubber of the rooftop in front of me, clawing for a hold.

“Screw the gun,” Halley shouts, and pulls me away. “We need to leave, right now.”

I can’t see if the Commander and Sergeant Becker are still alive, but I don’t want to wait around for instructions while the alien behemoths are taking apart the building under our feet.

The run back to the access door seems to take a lot longer than the dash out when we arrived up here, even though it feels like I’m running about twice as fast. Behind us, it sounds like someone is dropping frigates onto the hard ground from high orbit.

When we get to the door, there’s a momentary traffic jam as ten of us are trying to squeeze through the hatch at the same time.

“Where’s the damn shelter?” Halley yells through the din.

“Down the stairs, basement level,” one of the Marines shouts back as we duck through the door and run down the first flight of stairs. “Bottom of the stairs, take a right.”

We thunder down the stairs like a herd of spooked animals. I have a brief flashback to our countdown line-ups in front of the building back in Basic, and find that mortal danger is an even better motivator for a speedy descent than a pissed-off senior drill instructor.

Just as I reach the landing at the top floor, a huge jolt shakes the building, and most of us are knocked off our feet once again. I manage to hold on to the handrail with both arms, and avoid cracking my head on the metal latticework of the access staircase. Overhead, the lights flicker once, and then go out altogether.

“The fuck?” someone demands. “How can they cut the power? This place is a fucking fusion plant.”

“Keep moving, moron,” another Marine replies. “Don’t fucking matter right now.”

We rush down the stairs to the basement level. The building above our heads is shuddering with every new impact. With the power gone, the basement hallway is only lit by red emergency lights, which paint the scene in an eerie glow. On one of the levels above, something big crashes to the floor with a thundering racket that makes the walls shake. I feel like one of the little pigs in the storybook, running away from the big, bad wolf who has come to blow the house down.

The door of the emergency shelter is a small armored hatch set into a recessed section of the hallway. The traffic jam from before repeats itself down here in the semi-darkness as a dozen people converge on the little alcove all at once. The Marines at the front of the pack start pounding on the hatch with fists and rifle butts.

“Lieutenant Benning, open the fucking hatch,” Halley shouts into the headset of her comms unit.

“Affirmative,” comes the Lieutenant’s muffled reply over the common channel. “Stand back, that hatch opens out.”

The Marines clear the area in front of the hatch, and someone inside unlatches it and swings it open. The hatch itself is almost a foot thick, and the concrete walls of the shelter are at least twice as thick, but after the display I witnessed on the roof, I have my doubts about crawling in there and letting our visitors stomp around on top of us. Part of me wants to run off, find an exit door, and make for the hills. Then the Marines behind us push me along, and we file through the narrow doorway and into the shelter.

The emergency bunker is a small room that’s already crowded with all the civilian techs working at the station. The sudden and rapid influx of another dozen people in bulky battle armor turns the room into tight quarters worthy of an enlisted berth on a Navy ship. Someone behind me closes the hatch, and the awful crashing and rumbling sounds coming from above diminish a little.

“Everyone make it down okay?” a voice asks, and I recognize Commander Campbell’s gruff baritone.

“Head count,” Sergeant Becker shouts.

“Rivers and Okuda are still topside,” someone replies. “They were over by the autocannon. Can’t raise ‘em on comms anymore.”

“Well, shit.” Sergeant Becker checks the loading status of his rifle, and shoulders his way through the crowd. “Two of you come with me. McMurtry, Gonzales, you’re it.”

“Belay that order,” Commander Campbell says. “You keep that hatch shut right now.”

Sergeant Becker turns around, and glares at the Commander, who is standing at the other side of the room.

“We don’t leave Marines behind, sir. If I still have men out there, I need to go and get them.”

“You’d get turned into paste for nothing. That whole corner of the roof is gone. I saw them rip it right off, cannon mount and all. Your guys are KIA, Sarge. Stand down.”

There’s a general grumbling in the ranks of the garrison Marines, but the XO is by far the highest-ranking person in the room, and McMurtry and Gonzales seem rather relieved by the Commander’s order. Halley and I make our way through the cluster of armored Marines by the access hatch, and join the Commander and Lieutenant Benning at the far corner of the room.

All around me, there’s a sudden swell of conversation as the civilians want to know what happened on the roof, and the Marines are more than willing to share. Commander Campbell fills in the details for Lieutenant Benning, who only got a very sketchy view of the short battle through our sporadic radio messages.

There’s sudden, massive jolt, much stronger than the ones before it, and the emergency lights in the room flicker briefly. I can hear an eerie groaning sound, and deduce that a good part of the building structure overhead is collapsing on top of us. Then the first jolt is followed by another, this one even more bone-rattling, and it sounds like the Chinese just dropped a thermobaric artillery shell into the hallway just outside the shelter’s hatch. Most of the Marines hit the deck, shouting and cursing. Halley and I crouch down and look up at the ceiling.

The shelter is a square room, maybe thirty by thirty feet, and largely devoid of furniture. There’s a comms console on a table in the back of the room, and the walls are lined with metal benches that are bolted to the concrete floor. There’s another door near the comms station, this one fitted with a privacy partition rather than a steel hatch. I walk over to the second doorway, and move the partition aside to find a smaller room, taken up mostly by a chemical toilet and a stuffed supply rack. There’s nothing in this shelter solid enough to crawl under if our visitors manage to crush the roof over our heads.