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  BRIDGEHEAD

  Invasion Earth Book 2

  By

  Chris Lowry

  copyright 2017

  Grand Ozarks Media

  All Rights Reserved

  CHAPTER ONE

  Jake stared through the opening in the plasterboard trying to peek over Danish and Waldo as they stood guard over the entrance.

  “What the hell are they doing in there?” he grumbled.

  “Searching,” Steph answered.

  She watched the two soldiers at the entrance, curious but patient. The noise of the crowd stirring around them grew louder, voices murmuring questions and queries, words she couldn’t make out.

  “You opened it,” Jake complained. “You should have gone in.”

  “Then I’d be in there, and you’d be out here all alone,” she said in a matter of fact voice.

  The noise grew louder, and now Jake could hear yelling and sharp screams from the far corner of the corridor that stretched from the roll up doors where they entered the entire length of the building, and around the edges.

  The fifteen foot space was packed with people, survivors of the alien invasion who took refuge in the building, even though they couldn’t access the enclosed space inside.

  Until Steph showed up and sawed a hole in the wall.

  A watery eyed man hustled up to Waldo.

  “I need to speak to your leader,” he said in a panicked whisper.

  “Take me to your leader?” Crocket shifted his weapon in his grip. “Isn’t that what the Lick said?”

  When the Lick touched down on planet earth three years ago, the first encounter was destroying a convocation of world leaders. The second encounter was killing all of their replacements.

  “We have a problem,” Burmage stammered.

  The sagging skin on his neck and jowls shook as he moved his head back and forth, peering over his shoulders and then at the noise growing ever louder from the far end of the building.

  “Lt!” Waldo shouted over his shoulder.

  “What?” a voice screamed from inside the room.

  “Trouble!”

  Lt William Bonney marched through the knife cut opening in the wall and stared at the murmuring crowd.

  “Them?” he grunted.

  “Him,” Waldo pointed to Burmage.

  The first man to meet them when they broke into the warehouse blinked up at Lt and wrung his hands.

  “We don’t normally open any doors during daylight,” he explained. “Because it attracts attention.”

  “What kind of attention?” Lt snapped. “Licks?”

  Burmage licked his lips, eyes brimming with unshed tears.

  “Rivals,” he squeaked. “Bandits.”

  “Banditos?” Lt crowed. He slapped Waldo on the back. “We haven’t had a run in with bandits in, how long Waldo? Six months?”

  “About that, Sir.”

  “See,” Lt rounded on Burmage. “I hate me some Licks, but there’s two things I hate worse. Traitors who work with the Licks and sell out their fellow survivors, and damn bullies calling themselves Bandits. They don’t want to work for it, they just want to take what other folks have worked hard for. It is un-damn American, and we ain’t going to stand for it. Are we Crockett?”

  “No, Lt.”

  “Waldo, get in there and tell Babe to get suited up. Send Doc out here. You,” he pointed at Jake. “Follow me.”

  He started down the corridor toward the small metal doorway embedded in one wall.

  “Girl,” Lt called out. “Tell ‘em which way we went.”

  “The name is Steph,” she shouted.

  Lt drew up short.

  “Where the hell are my manners,” he scoffed at Jake. “Listen, Steph, I’m offering you my sincere apology for forgetting my manners. If my Mamaw was still alive, she’d send me out in the woods to get a switch for that lapse. I’ve got your name, and I ain’t gonna forget it. And if I do, you have permission to call me on it. Name’s a powerful thing.”

  “Thank you,” said Steph.

  “But you’re name ain’t Steph, not to me.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s Steph,” she said. “Short for Stephanie.”

  “Well and good,” said Lt. “But now ain’t the time for debate nor is it time for a naming ceremony. Can you shoot Annie Oakley?”

  “Don’t call me Annie,” she begged.

  “Alright Oakley, do what I said and tell the fucking Doc to find me.”

  He turned his back on the girl and began walking. Jake fell in step behind him.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The man said there was trouble. Weren’t you listening.”

  “Yeah,” Jake sulked. “Bandits.”

  “Bandits,” Lt agreed. “We’re gonna go see what they want. Bandits always want something.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Lt peeked around the corner of the door.

  “Where?” he asked Burmage.

  The stout man pointed to the edge of the fence. Lt squinted and glared at the shadows, as if willing the men to appear. Then by magic he could see them.

  Not magic, really, he sniffed. Bumps, and not the kind that go in the night.

  “Fuckers got ghillie suits.”

  He heard Burmage make a noise of agreement behind him. Lt watched the ground move. It slithered and rolled, slow and steady in a relentless onslaught, tortoise speed, toward the warehouse.

  “What do you have that they want?” Bonney turned his head enough to watch Burmage and still keep the bandits advance in his peripheral vision.

  “They take everything,” the man whispered almost like a sob. “Food. Shelter. Anything we find, they take.”

  “They know about the inside?”

  He got a head shake for an answer.

  “No one knew,” he said. “No one remembered. I mean I knew the lab was there, but inside? No. We only dreamed of getting in.”

  “If you can’t find a door, make one,” Lt said and shifted back into the shadows. “I wish we had a damn radio. How fast can you run?”

  “Depends on what’s chasing me,” Jake cocked up an eyebrow.

  “Which do you think is faster? A bullet or my boot up your ass?”

  “What size shoe do you wear?”

  “Hey Burmage, those bandits all around or they pretty much stick to one point of entry?”

  “Just the one spot in the fence they cut.”

  “They know you’re watching?”

  Burmage nodded.

  “It seems to give them a thrill.”

  “Why don’t you just shoot them?” Jake huffed.

  “We don’t have guns.”

  “I meant him,” he pointed to Lt. “Us.”

  “I aim to see what they want first. I don’t have anything against a shoot first policy as a standard, but I reserve that for Licks. People, they get a little rope to hang themselves with.”

  “People work with Licks, you know,” Jake muttered under his breath.

  “Brother, I know it. And I don’t like it any more than you do by the sound of your voice. But let’s play it my way til I say otherwise.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “That’s the spirit. Now run your ass out of one of those roll up doors and go tel
l Sherill to wait for my signal.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “He knows what.”

  Jake leaned over and peeked out of the door.

  “That’s a lot of ground to cover with them out there.”

  “Yeah it is.”

  “What if they shoot me?”

  “Run fast.”

  “Faster than a speeding bullet?”

  “My boot or a locomotive are your only other options,” Lt said.

  Jake sighed, then pushed off of his knees to stand up, his face lost in the shadows.

  “What’s the message?” Lt asked him.

  “Wait for my signal.”

  “Not your signal, my signal.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  “But it’s not what you said. Now go,” Lt rolled down onto his stomach and stuck the barrel of his rifle against the edge of the door.

  He was still hidden in the darkness inside, but if the banditos crawling toward the warehouse made a move to shoot Jake as he ran, it was a clear shot.

  Lt listened to the boy shuffle off, and heard the creak of the rolling door as it inched up a foot and a half. Then pounding footsteps echoed through the cracked asphalt surrounding the complex.

  The bumps outside paused, waited, but no one popped up to shoot. When the footsteps died down, they resumed their relentless crawl.

  “Hold up!” Lt yelled out to them and watched the bumps freeze again. “Ya’ll think you’re being sneaky-like, but we’ve been watching you for a while now. Why don’t you take off them ghillie suits and let’s have us a palaver.”

  “What’s a ghillie suit?” Steph asked from the shadows behind him.

  One of the bumps moved, like the leaf covered earth surging up, and settled on its knees. It was shaped like a man, vague and indistinct. Lt thought it looked like a lump of moss covered leaves on a stump he had once seen on a trek through the woods.

  “That’s a ghillie suit,” he said to her. “Camo.”

  He could hear her breath as she settled next to him on the ground, on the inside of the door so she couldn’t be seen.

  “We have you surrounded!” the moss man yelled.

  “You sure about that?” Lt yelled back. “I count a dozen ghillies moving up on me, but don’t see nothing out by the fence.”

  “That’s how it’s supposed to work, isn’t it!” the man called back.

  “Moss man, I think you THINK that’s how it’s supposed to work.”

  “You know something I don’t?”

  The suited man rested a rifle against his shoulder, aimed into the darkness of the doorway. Lt counted six more barrels disguised to look like sticks drift toward the same opening.

  “Cousin,” he called out. “I know a lot of something you don’t.”

  The man laughed.

  “I don’t have any cousins left,” he shouted. “Lost them in the first wave. You must be new around here.”

  “How you figure?”

  “Because the people in there know the score. They know how this is supposed to work. You being new, and me being in a forgiving mood, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Hot damn, Cousin. That’s awful nice of you to be so giving like that. And I appreciate it. Now let me return the favor. We got ourselves some high tech going on’s inside of here, and there’s room on the team for you. Team Go Humans is now hiring. So, you want a job, lay down your weapons and line up for an interview.”

  “What kind of high tech?” Moss man said. Lt didn’t like the greedy sound of his voice.

  “They’re going to take it,” Burmage muttered behind him. “We’re outnumbered.”

  “He got more than the dozen?”

  “Thirty,” said Burmage. “Maybe fifty.”

  “Go check on Babe, see if he’s got that suit working yet.”

  Steph scrambled back from him. He listened to her scamper away and turned back to the opening.

  “Look here Cuz, I don’t like this talking to a man with his face covered crap. I’m going to sit up here in this doorway, and you take off your hat, and let’s have a man to man on what’s happening next.”

  “Agreed,” said Moss man. He lifted up a grungy hand and swiped the net covered headdress off.

  Lt held out his rifle in one hand so they could see it.

  “But look, don’t you go taking potshots at me,” he called out and settled with his back against the frame of the door. “This is just friendly discussions, alright.”

  He watched Moss man’s hand wave the others down, but he barrels didn’t move. Lt sat with his spine against the frame of the door, his body half in the light, rifle on his lap. He made sure the bandits could see both of his hands.

  “What is going to happen next,” Moss man said. “Is, you throw out your weapons, and we’re coming in to get what’s owed to us.”

  “That the way you want this to go down?” Lt asked.

  “Like I said, you’re new here. We have an arrangement.”

  “I am new here,” Lt said. “So I’m going to give YOU the benefit of the doubt. I made a fair offer of employment, and you could still do me some good. But not one of you has laid down your weapon yet. That ain’t the way to build up trust.”

  “What’s your offer?” Moss man asked.

  “Now your mind is on the right track, Cuz. I’m in the Lick killing business and I’m looking to franchise my operation. You take your merry band of Robin Hoods there, and get to killing what needs killing the most. Fucking Licks. Then you leave these nice people alone to do what they need to be doing. Surviving.”

  “What makes you think we’re not killing the Lick already?”

  “Brother, you’re sitting here talking to me, ain’t you? After sneaking up and breaking in. Two plus two don’t equal five, no matter how you slice it.”

  Moss man grunted. He shifted his head to the right. Lt watched him make eye contact with the unmoving lump there, heard the mutter of their voices.

  He didn’t like Moss man’s pinched face. The grit and grime of the unwashed look, stringy hair framing skull like cheekbones. The man looked squirrely to him.

  “Let us in,” Moss man finished muttering to the other bump and turned back to Lt. “We’re gonna take what’s owed to us and anything else we see fit, and if we decide to go hunt aliens after, that’s up to us.”

  Lt shook his head.

  “Cuz, I’m really sorry to hear you say that.”

  Two more bumps sat up, stick like rifles zeroed in on Lt where he sat.

  “Not as sorry as you’re going to be.”

  “You don’t want to know about the high tech we found in here?”

  “I’m going to find out.”

  “It’s dangerous,” Lt shook his head. “Invisible weapons.”

  He held up his finger like a gun, long index finger aimed at one of the bumps. He cocked his thumb back, flicked it down and winked at Moss man.

  “Phew.”

  The bumps head popped, spraying Moss man in goo. The sound of the shot reached them a half second later.

  Lt moved his finger again.

  “Phew.”

  A second man’s head cracked forward. His body pitched across one of the men still on the ground. Moss man started screaming, to fire, to shoot, to retreat.

  In the confusion and chaos, Lt lifted his rifle and sent two three round bursts across the tops of the men. Sherill, from his position at the top of the rose popped four more as they scrambled in different directions.

  Lt slid his legs out of the door and dropped to the side of the concrete steps.

  Moss man got two of the bandits turned around, laying suppressing fire into the woods behind them, aiming into the treetops. The rest of the uninjured sent a wave of bullets pinging off the concrete Lt was ducked behind.

  A buzzing side winged in from another direction. Lt dropped as he saw more bandits scurrying toward his position, and even more beyond the fence making an angle on the trees where Sherill and Jake wer
e hidden.

  “Shit,” he muttered and flicked over to single shot selector. He lined up the sights, aimed at the point man, and sent a round through his throat.