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«Sir,» muttered the first sergeant as the platoon pounded into the building, grabbing demo and caps as they went by, «this is bound to cause casualties.»
«Well, Top, there are times when you have to balance relative risk. I don't have much idea how much time we have, but I doubt we have much longer.»
* * *
«We have to slow them down,» noted the S-3, desperately. «Charlie is just starting on the bunker and the FAE. It'll take them at least an hour.»
«More,» noted the fire chief, «it'll take that long just to pump the building full of gas.»
The Posleen had taken their time assembling—for which everyone was thankful. But having reduced the last resistance and most of the buildings around Central Square, the nearest B-Dec force was coming down Highway 3. And there was only a scattering of militia and police to stop the six-thousand-odd rampaging aliens. Other Posleen were moving in from the east and west, but by the time those Posleen reached the city center it would be nearly dawn and the bunker and FAE would be prepared.
It was the Central Square force, rolling down the main highway into town, that would be the primary threat to the plan.
«We need something to distract them, to scare them,» commented the battalion commander, «something like that dragon that the ACS used on Diess.»
«I'll tell you one thing every Earth animal is afraid of,» said the scarred chief, getting the glimmering of an idea, «and that's fire.»
«What are you thinking?» asked the commander.
«If we had some flamethrowers . . .» said the S-3 and his eyes widened at the same time as the chief's.
«Jerry,» said the S-3, turning to his NCOIC, «call Quarles Gas, and tell them we need some more flammables. Some gas trucks, gasoline that is, or kerosene. Any liquid flammables.»
«Kerosene is the preference. I'll go get the fire trucks,» said the chief, shaking her head.
* * *
«Colonel?»
«Yes, Sergeant Major?» Colonel Robertson was mortally tired. The strains of the day were rapidly taking their toll and he wondered what new catastrophe the sergeant major had to report.
«Well, sir, I was checking on the detail that was issuing from the ammo point, and all the parties are out on site, but there's still over a ton of demo and ammunition of one sort or another left.»
«Okay, I guess we could blow it in place when the Posleen get here.»
«Yes, sir, we could, but I was thinking, the ammo dump isn't far from the armory and I've got that detail still on site . . .»
«And you think there might be better places to put the ammo than in the ammo dump.»
«Yes, sir. Face it, the dump is designed to contain an explosion,» said the sergeant major with a feral smile.
«Well, Sergeant Major, why don't you just take charge of that little detail.» The colonel smiled back. Good subordinates were such a treasure.
«Yes, sir!»
* * *
Shari stumbled into the crowd behind the Public Safety Building and carefully lowered Kelly and Susie to the ground. Billy let go of her skirt and sat down, his eyes wide and unseeing. She slumped beside him as the two girls huddled into her lap, Susie quietly whimpering from the broken blisters on her feet and the sights glimpsed over her mother's shoulder. A woman coming through the crowd stopped and stared, then walked over.
«Are you in the pool?» she asked abruptly.
Shari looked at her with wide unemotional eyes. It took a long moment to register her question. «What?» she croaked.
«Are you in the basket? Did you enter your name to be drawn?»
«Drawn for what?» she gasped again, mouth and throat dry from dehydration and agonizingly extended fear.
Finally the woman grasped that Shari was suffering from more than the general shock of the loathsome afternoon drawn into evening. «Are you going to be all right?»
Shari started to laugh quietly and the laughs began to segue into sobs.
Every step she took, from the parking lot to where the Army and police were digging in along the interstate, she knew would be their last. Time and again she heard the centaurs drawing closer, only to be delayed by some more interesting target. When she was forced to pick up Susie, drawing her already slow progress to a crawl, she was overcome with the utter certainty that her babies were going to die. And from what she had heard behind her it was going to be one of the worst of all possible deaths.
The pain-racked march was a drawn-out nightmare, in which the monsters were always just behind you and you knew that at any moment they would touch you and then you would die. But this was no nightmare; this was a stark reality as the sun set behind her in a blaze of red and she dropped into the shadows of Salem Hill to the accompaniment of dying screams.
The passing matron waved for one of the tending fire fighters as Shari began to collapse into hysterics. The EMT came over, readying a dose of Hiberzine.
«No,» said one of the other paramedics. She grabbed Shari by her shoulders and forced her to look up. «You have to keep together,» she snapped. «We need you; we need all the mothers. You're Shari Reilly, right?»
Shari nodded her head, still unable to stop the sobs. The girls started crying softly in response as Billy just sat and rocked, looking into the deepening twilight.
«You came in from Central Park?»
«Uh-huh,» Shari sobbed, unable to catch her breath.
«All you have to do is hang on until they call your name, okay? It's a lot easier than walking from Target to the interstate. We got a call on you. Let me see your daughter's feet.»
As the paramedic tended to Susie, Shari slowly got herself under a little better control.
«You're going through a normal reaction,» said the medic, soothingly. «You've had a shock, Jesus, we all have! But yours was worse. You go through a reaction period. You held out until you were here, which is better than most. You held it together getting out of the . . . the . . .»
«Out of hell,» said Billy.
Shari squeezed her son to her. «Are you go
«I . . . I . . .»
«It's okay, baby, we're safe.»
«No, we're not, Mom. Don't lie.»
«Son,» said the medic firmly, «the engineers are building the best damn shelter they can to protect you, and the rest of us are going to try to make sure there's nothing to draw the Posleen in. We're go
«Is it go
«I won't promise anything,» said the paramedic honestly. «But it's a better chance than without it.»
«Excuse me,» said a woman, looming out of the darkness, «somebody said you were up at Spotsylvania Mall.» The woman's voice caught for a moment. «Did you happen to see a man driving,» she paused, «driving a hunter green Suburban . . .»
«My husband was a tall man . . .»
«Did you see . . .»
The women rose around her, closing in with desperate questions, but the paramedic rose over her like an enraged lioness. «Look, people, I know you're wondering about your . . . your families, your husbands, but this lady's been through enough already . . .»
«No,» said Shari, with a quavering voice, «I have to say it, I have to. . . . There was nobody behind me, nobody at all. I'm sorry . . .» She started crying again, quietly. «There wasn't anything I could do. I, I, just had to walk away, you see? I had to save my babies, I had to walk and keep walking . . . There was this little girl . . . she wouldn't come with me and I was carrying my babies . . . I couldn't, I couldn't . . .»
«Shhh,» the medic cried into her hair, «it's all right, it is. There's nothing to do . . .»
«We had to walk,» laughed Billy. «We just walked and walked and never ever looked back. You can't look back, you just have to walk and walk . . .» He began to scream.