2021 (25 page)

‘All I want to know is if we have enough of these catapult weapons c
an we stop these monsters?’ he asked.

Th
e surgeon now looked quite uncomfortable.

‘I guess in theory, General, then
I’m not a military expert’ he replied. ‘You’d need an awful lot of weapons to stop these things, General, if there really are as many of them as appeared in that film we all watched back at the Pentagon’ he stated. ‘How many of them do we estimate there are?’ the surgeon asked curiously.

‘Millions!’ interrupted Jack.

‘Millions?’ queried t
he surgeon ‘that cannot be correct surely?’

‘We’ve all seen them
’ added Stuart ‘they were pouring out of a large black building just like ants’ he added as everyone overhearing him just gasped in horror.

‘Then
I suggest they’ll take some stopping’ nodded the surgeon as he visibly swallowed hard.

‘Yes
and the American Army will take some stopping too, armed with these new weapons’ stated the General boldly. ‘Sergeant, I want as many factories requisitioned around the country as is humanly possible. I want these weapons being manufactured in their thousands before the day is done’ the General immediately demanded.

‘Right away, Sir!’ saluted the sergeant before he quickly ran off.

‘NOW EVERYONE LISTEN HERE!’ shouted General O’Dowd
. ‘NOW I DON’T KNOW EXACTLY WHY THESE CREATURES CAME HERE, BUT IF IT’S A FIGHT THEY WANT, THEN THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT WE’LL GIVE THEM!’

A
ll the General’s men cheered him as he promptly marched off!

Stuart though, looked alarmed and
quickly ran after him.

‘General
, there may be other chemical, nerve, gas or even germ weapons we haven’t tried yet that may work much better than these crude guns we’ve designed. Just give us more time and I’m sure we’ll come up with something’ Stuart pleaded.

The General just stopped dead in his tracks as he just stared back at him.

‘Professor Keys, at the speed your people are estimating these things can travel
, they will be baring down on the good people of San Francisco, that’s if these damn things are not there already. Time, my good Professor, is the one thing we
don’t
have’ he told Stuart forcefully as he tried to keep up as he ran backwards as the General continued to march along at fast pace.

‘But
, General O’Dowd, can I ask you what you intend upon doing?’ Stuart asked him urgently and the General suddenly stopped.

‘I’ll tell you what
I’m going to do, Professor Keys. The moment we have enough of these weapons to equip an army, we’re going to intercept the course of these damned creatures and then meet them head on. Then, my good Professor, we’ll see who’s got ‘the ultimate fighting machine’ because we’re going to KICK THEIR BACKSIDES!’ the General shouted as he then just brushed Stuart aside as he marched off again.

‘But you haven’t seen these things, there are
millions
of them, you’ll simply be swept away’ Stuart argued, but the General had now made up his mind and wasn’t listening to him anymore.

Joan and t
he others now caught up with Stuart.

‘What’s he intending to do?’ asked Joan curiously.

‘He says he
intends upon meeting them head on’ replied Stuart raising his arms up in despair.

‘What?’ queried Jack ‘
but they’ll get slaughtered!’

‘I tried telling him, Jack, but he just wouldn’t listen’ shrugged Stuart.

‘Come on, l
et’s go back to the body of the one we’ve captured. There has to be a better solution than this low tech one we currently have, why it’s like going back to the days of the Roman Empire’ complained Stuart.

‘Still, Joan’s right
, Stuart, the Romans
were
the ultimate fighting machine’ smiled Jack.

‘Trouble is, Jack, the
se creatures
are
the ultimate fighting machine now’ Joan replied shaking her head as she looked very worried.

The
y busied themselves until it became dark, but in the end Stuart just threw up his arms in surrender.

‘The General’s right, without
access to modern machines that actually work and can penetrate this creature’s impossibly tough skin, any proper examination of this thing is impossible.’

The others looked for some words of encouragement
, but unfortunately they couldn’t find any.

Day Nine:

15
^th
January 2021

Just Outside Lodi,

California, U.S.A.

T
he United States government sent out just over two hundred and fifty investigators to try and establish the exact size of the huge dead zone area around California.

Only twenty seven even returned, with the others all having overstepped the point where they could escape back out again.

General O’Dowd
meanwhile, had poured over detailed maps showing the terrain and had decided that Lodi in California was to be the best point to launch an all out counterattack against the creatures.

He had picked a point where he hoped they hadn’t yet reached, but also strategically it was also an area that was reasonably flat that his troops could easily access.

The largest horse drawn artillery unit since the American Civil Wa
r was soon assembled on United States’ soil.

General O’Dowd, a keen military historian himself, at first suggested it would be like the great American Victory over the Villista forces back in 1916, until he remembered of course, it was the same 7
^th
Calvary who had perished at the hands of the mostly Sioux Indians at the battle at the Little Big Horn some forty years earlier.

When General O’Dowd was finally able to view his assembled
army however, he compared it to that of Alexander the Great who had conquered Egypt, Greece and the entire might of the Persian Empire with an almighty army that must have looked vaguely similar to his own.

S
uch an enormous army was impossible to keep secret and very soon it sparked off a media frenzy all around the world as reporters demanded to know what on earth was going on.

The President however, had decided to remain tight lipped issuing only a statement that the Army was taking part in secret
strategic ‘manoeuvres’ within the area.

Any attention on what was happen
ing in the Lodi area met with swift thrift from members of the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, The National Guard and members of all three armed forces.

Whilst any attention from
the air was met with the deployment of military jets or helicopters to drive any intruders away before they got anywhere even remotely near the assembled army or the dead zone itself.

F
actories containing any equipment to mass produce cog wheels or mass automated welding machines were immediately requisitioned and had simply been seized by the army in the evening, with the owners and factory workers arriving to work the next day to discover themselves locked out of their own factories.

Using the simple template Joan, Stuart
, Jack and their fellow scientists all between them had designed, specialist government industrial scientists, engineers and other experts were now mass producing these crude weapons at a truly astounding rate.

Joan had called them
‘catapults’ but later Stuart suggested to her that they were far more like giant ‘crossbows’ instead.

Soon
, huge fleets of articulated trucks loaded with the weapons and their ammunition were rolling in to Lodi and secretly taken photos of the individual parts began to appear on the internet along with many government conspiracy theories.

Most of the media scoffed a
t them however, as how could these claims possibly be true? The American government mass producing ancient weapons? The whole idea seemed ludicrous.

When thousands of horses were also requisitioned however and more details of the weapons became apparent, people began to take the claims more seriously.

Members of t
he press were now clamouring for answers.

‘Have you heard his plan?’ asked Joan as she rushed into the army tent they had now all been billeted in.

‘No’ replied both Stuart and Jack simultaneously.

‘General O’Dowd is going to lead his troops in on horseback like
some modern day General Custer’ she replied.

‘I hope tha
t analogy doesn’t turn out quite as bad as it sounds’ remarked Stuart looking very worried ‘as you remember how
that
turned out?’

‘Have you seen it, Dad?’ asked Jenny, looking very excited
as she arrived back in the tent herself ‘they’re getting ready to leave soon’ she uttered excitedly.

‘
No, I’ve just been trying to catch up with some sleep’ her dad replied.

‘This is George’ smiled Jenny ‘he’s agreed to drive us all out there.’

Jack, Stuart and Joan had worked around the clock on the design and specification of the weapons and
they had been flown straight back to the Lodi area afterwards, where they had been resting ever since.

Now though, as tired as they still were, they were keen to see how things were progressing.

They quickly all piled into the soldier’s
troop carrier as he drove swiftly over to General O’Dowd’s army assembly point.

Nothing could have prepared them for
the sight they were about to witness, as when they all walked from the vehicle and looked down, they could see over seventy thousand men, some twenty thousand horses and what looked like an equal number of Joan’s crude catapult or crossbow style weapons.

Stuart just rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

‘But how could
they produce so much so quickly?’ he uttered in amazement.

‘We’re at war now, Stuart’ replied Jack staring out over the remarkable scene
of almost biblical proportions.

‘Well, we did go to great lengths to design the weapons to be quick and easy to manufacture didn’t we’ smiled Joan
. ‘Once they found a few computerised welding and assembly plants, they were probably able to pump several out a second’ she smiled.

Stuart now stepped forwards as
he just stared in disbelief.

‘My God!’ he uttered ‘it’s like a scene from the
great Trojan wars!’

‘According to General O’Dowd it’s the biggest army of its kind
since the time of Alexander the Great’ commented Joan.

‘Christ, will you just look at it
! ’ uttered Jack in amazement.

‘Actually that was before even
he
was born, Christ I mean’ added Jenny with a smile.

Then she looked more serious.

‘Dad, do you think they can really beat them?’ she asked.

‘Sadly, Jenny, I think Joan comparing General O’Dowd to General Custer was quite astute’ he commented thoughtfully
as he now looked very worried.

‘Why’s that, Dad?’ Jenny queri
ed.

‘Because I think General O’Dowd
is about to find his own Little Big Horn’ he answered.

‘You don’t think they can stop th
em then?’ asked Jenny.

He
r dad though, just didn’t reply.

Instead, he turned to George.

‘Where is the General?’ he asked.

‘He’s in
that central tent down there’ he pointed.

‘Then we’d better get down there’ commented Stuart
now looking very stern faced.

Upon seeing Stuart, Joan and Jack
approaching him, the General immediately broke off what he was doing and greeted them warmly.

‘Well? Have you come up with anything
else? I mean, what the hell are these creatures?’ he asked.

‘No,
I’m sorry to report, General, we have no more information on these creatures than we had before’ Stuart admitted as the General looked disappointed.

‘They look most similar to
a form of migrating locust’ added Joan ‘Locustus Migratoria’ to give it its Latin Name.’

‘What was that again?’ queried the General ‘the Latin name I mean?’

‘Locustus Migratoria’ repeated Joan ‘it mea
ns ‘migrating locust’ they are usually found in their millions and move as one unit, devastating the crops in entire areas before then moving onto new ones’ she explained. ‘Although, in truth, these are very different of course, but that’s the nearest thing on Earth we could find to compare them to’ she explained.

‘Migrating locusts’ repeated the General as he stroked his chin in thought.