Unknown - The_Growing_589064

“Who, me? Not a chance, cuz. I’ve still got bruises from the last time you pounded me, thanks.”

The two listen momentarily to Allen’s increasingly irate squawking.

“She’s gonna bust me down to Airman for this, you know.”

Pulling down the mirrored lenses of her sunglasses, Dakota gives him a look that makes him laugh.

“Alright, I get your point, Koda. So…what do we do now?”

As if hearing the question, the radio crackles back to life. “Alright, listen up, everybody. This means you too, ‘Airman’ Rivers.”

Dakota winces.

Manny gulps.

“Alright, here’s the deal. These bastards aren’t like anything we’ve faced before, and we’re gonna need to be creative in figuring out a way to get past them without getting ourselves fragged to Canada in little pieces. Rule number one, people. No shooting at them. They’re bulletproof and anything you fire at them will ricochet god knows where. We can’t risk it, so put your guns away for another fight, understand?”

Affirmatives buzz across the radio.

“Our friends from the Guard were kind enough to bring along a few little toys we’re going to try out instead, so everybody just sit tight for a bit and I’ll get back to you.”

Since Koda and Manny can see very little from behind the massive troop carrier they are following, they do exactly as Allen suggests and cool their heels while keeping a wary eye on the metallic monstrosities lined up across the roadway and beyond.

A loud, whooshing roar is followed immediately by an explosion so powerful that Dakota and Manny are tossed about like rag dolls as the truck bounces and rolls on its springs.

The shaking no sooner stops gunfire erupts from all around them. The distinctive sounds of bullets hitting the metal of the truck cause the cousins to duck down again. The driver’s side window shatters, raining glass over them both. The roar of gunfire is punctuated here and there by the horrific screams of men and women in agony.

Unable to lay passively by and do nothing, Dakota reaches over and unlocks the passenger’s side door, then begins to crawl overtop of Manny, who grabs her by the waistband of her jeans.

“What the hell are you doing, cuz? They’re killing us out there!!”

“Exactly,” Dylan replies, prying Manny’s hand from her waist and continuing to crawl until she is out of the truck. Coming up onto her haunches, she surveys the damage. Men and women are scattered like tenpins, many of them bleeding their life into the snow and pleading with an uncaring sky to save them. As she watches, a soldier becomes a corpse, jittering like a puppet on the hard-packed snow under the constant, unremitting onslaught of artillery.

Taking in a deep breath, she lowers her head and charges out into the fray. Bullets slice the air around her, but she keeps her head down and keeps running, sinking past her knees in the snow. Reaching the first two injured soldiers, she lowers her arms and grabs them by their jackets, dragging them until she is behind the cover of a military vehicle.

Another whooshing roar sounds from very close by, and the resulting explosion knocks her to the ground. A shadow falls over her, and when she looks up, Manny is there, two more injured soldiers in his grasp. His face is grim, but his eyes are shining.

“Couldn’t let you have all the fun,” he grumbles, voice almost lost within the continuing gun battle.

Getting back to her feet, Koda pounds on the panel of the vehicle before her, then pounds harder when there’s no response. “Watch them!” she commands over her shoulder as she makes her way up to the cab of the vehicle. Two men lay in the cab, dead beyond any possibility of resurrection, destroyed beyond any possibility of recognition.

“Uh…Koda?”

Dakota whirls around. “What?”

“They’re bleeding pretty bad over here. What should I do?”

Koda thinks for a moment. “Pack snow in their wounds. It should slow the bleeding until we can get them under some kind of cover. I need to get my kit.”

“I’ll do it.”

“No. Stay with the injured. I’ll be right back.”

Knowing better than to argue with his cousin, Manny kneels in the snow and begins scooping handfuls of it onto the bleeding chests and bellies and limbs of his comrades, warning himself all the while not to look at their faces. As long as he doesn’t see their faces, he can pretend that they are simply strangers on a battlefield; strangers he will do his best to save.

Dakota makes her way back to the truck and retrieves her kit without much difficulty, but then becomes pinned down by furious gunfire. A man stumbles by, half of his face blown off, a smoking stump where his arm used to be. As she watches, he tumbles into the snow, and dies, open-eyed.

“Koda!”

Ripping her gaze away from the dead soldier, Dakota looks over to Manny, who is frantically compressing the chest of one of the women he’s dragged out of the line of fire. He is looking at Koda through eyes as wide as saucers.

“Hang on! I’ll be right there!”

She’s about to move when her attention is distracted. Looking on, she tracks a shoulder-launched missile as it flies across the gap that separates human from android, and explodes into the noticeably thinned android ranks. A huge fireball erupts, and Koda ducks down, covering her head with both arms as bits and pieces of androids rain down on her like a blazing summer storm. She slams back against the truck just in time to avoid being turned into a stain by a basketball sized lump of molten metal which lands in the snow not more than a foot away. It hisses violently, sending up clouds of vapor as it melts a hole in the snow several feet deep.

“Dakota!!”

Peering through the swirling, dissipating vapor, Koda watches as Manny takes a desperate step toward her position, only to be blown back by a bullet that pierces his arm and drops him to the ground.

“Manny! Hankashi!!! Shit.”

Grabbing her pack, she rushes across the space separating herself from her fallen cousin. Manny is already picking himself up as Koda reaches him. Aiding him to his feet, she looks into his eyes, her own flashing all kinds of warnings. “Damnit, Manny, this is no time to be playing John Wayne. How many times do I have to tell you? You’re no cowboy.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Like you’d just sit by and watch me get almost blown to bits, right?”

Scowling, Koda grabs his arm and turns it over. “You’re lucky. It’s just a graze.”

“Yeah, I know. Stings like fire, though.” He looks to his right. His face crumples. “Oh, holy damn,” he whispers, looking at the carnage lying around him. “Jesus, Koda, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have protected them from the shrapnel.” She looks over at the dead bodies laying in pieces over the snow and closes her eyes tightly for a moment. When she opens them again, they are clear and resolute. “Let’s go find some people we can help.”

3

The sound of men and women screaming and moaning in pain within the close confines of the troop carrier seems to encompass the whole world, and it’s all Manny can do not to jab a knife through his eardrums just to stop the gut-churning noise.

Koda has set up a field hospital, of sorts, within the vehicle, and the most grievously injured patients lay on makeshift cots, bleeding their lives away while the harried vet tries frantically to save them.

The battle outside is slowly winding down. Shoulder fired rockets have done the trick, and the mission has been reduced to a simple mop-up, as if anything about this terrifying monstrosity can be considered as mundane as “simple”.

Unless the androids have buddies out there.

Somewhere.