Read Conquest ~ Indian Hill 3 ~ A Michael Talbot Adventure Online
Authors: Mark Tufo
Conquest ~ Indian Hill 3 ~ A Michael Talbot Adventure (13 page)
“Mother? Me? Max
,
I barely know them and I’m far from a mother.”
“But
…
but you’re the closest thing we…
they have here.”
Beth’s stomach turned, she had not even really thought about what the children needed. Could she really leave them
t
here all alone? But they were doing much better than she had been, if not for them her ticket would have already been punched.
“Come with me
,
”
s
he answered.
“I can’t leave the little ones, who would take care of them?” Max’
s
lip tr
emb
led, he was done being grown-
up, he wanted more than anything to have all of his responsibilities stripped away.
“No, all of you
,” Beth said
.
Max’
s
eyes lit up and then went out. “How? We’d never all fit in the car or even the pickup truck if you drove it.
”
Beth’s heart was sinking. “What about the semi that you used to haul the liquor here?”
“We had to ditch that a few m
iles up the road in a rest stop
.
I
t was just too big to hide.”
“Is it still there
?” she asked
hoping beyond hope.
“It’s still there
,
but somebody torched it about two weeks ago.”
“Max
,
I’ve got to go
.
I
f you can’t all come with me I will get transportation for you when I get to where I’m going
,” Beth said
.
Max didn’t answer
.
H
e didn’t so much as say a word
.
Beth figured that
her words were ringing hollow.
“Max
,
if you don’t let me catch a ride, I’ll just go back out and start walking.”
Now Max did look up, but his words shocked her. “I can’t let you do that.”
“What? Are you telling me I can’t leave? Am I a prisoner?”
“Whoa, wait
,
L
ady.”
“And stop calling me
‘
lady
’
, my name is Beth.” She spat.
“Okay
-
okay, Beth
,” he said
tentatively.
“I can’t let you walk, you-know-
who is still out there.”
Beth’s anger evaporated
.
S
he
knew who Max was referring to
.
“Are you sure?”
s
he said softly
,
con
vinced if she talked too loudly
he would somehow hear her and finish the job he had set out to do.
“Yeah, Johnny and a couple of the others have been keeping an eye on him. He keeps going back to the place where I found you, trying to pick up your trail
,
I guess.”
Beth shivered
.
“Why doesn’t he just go home?” Beth more said to herself.
“So you see
,
I can’t let you walk and if you’re that determined to leave
,
” Max said scornfully
,
“
t
hen you can get a ride. But only to Worcester
—
Sammie
doesn’t like driving any
farther
than that.”
“Oh
,
thank you
,
Max
,” Beth said
as she kissed his cheek
.
Max blushed.
“Lad…
I mean Beth, Worcester isn’t any better than the rest of the world right now.”
And without going any
further
, Beth knew what he meant. “Just have him get me to the city limits and I’ll stay to the tree line on the highway.”
“Are you sure
,
Beth? It’s been kinda nice havin
g
you around here
,
” Max said
,
hopefully.
“Max
,
it has been great to be here and I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you for what you’ve done for me, but this is something important, something I shou
ld have taken care of a life
time ago. And I will send help as soon as I get there.”
“If you get there
,
” Max mumbled, hoping she didn’t see the tear that was once again beginning to well up.
“We should have just left him to die after the
Durgan
fight
,
” the interim Supreme Commander sneered.
His second-in-
command did his best to hide his contempt for the commander, but barely. “It seems that your plan to show the hu
-
mans how weak and pathetic they are has backfired, your supremeness
.”
H
e bowed.
But the
Interim
S
upreme
C
ommander
was far too angry at Talbot to even begin to notice the insolence that
had dripped from his second-in-
command
’
s words.
“
Sub-
Commander
, I want you to launch everything that we have! Now
!” he shouted
.
“As you wish
,
”
t
he
sub-c
ommander
stated as he bowed
again and turned to leave.
H
e couldn’t wait to get back to his quarters to note in his officers log, this latest slip up
f
rom
the I
nterim
S
upreme
Commander. Once he showed this to the Council of Wisdom, the
Interim Commander
would be tried and executed and he would become a Supreme Commander
himself and not
of some ratty-
as
s discovery ship but for a full-
blown Battle Cruiser
.
H
e nearly growled in anticipation, but while he was still under the thumb of
that incompetent fool
,
he would do his best to make sure that his head stayed rested firmly on his neck.
The alien fighters and heavy bombers launched within minutes of the order. They had already been on a high alert status. Even with the unaided eye
,
people knew trouble was coming, like a giant
meteor shower
the ships lit up the night sky. Those who could
, sought shelter under
ground. Some took up refuge in school buildings and town halls
—
the more prudent or at least more realistic took up sanctuary at their local churches. The attack was furious, swift, global and devastating. What little infrastructure had remained from the previous attack was now completely obliterated. The alien bombers were completely foreign to anything the
E
arth had been exposed to previously
.
T
hey didn’t so much as drop bombs as they let go of an energy ball roughly
fifteen
feet in diameter
from the under
belly of the vessel about
five
hundred
feet from the ground
.
I
t stop
ped
and explode
d
, the effect was not unlike that of a giant soap bubble on the ground
.
W
hen
it
burst roughly
twenty
seconds after forming, everything from skyscrapers to blades of grass
were
sucked up into the vortex caused by the collapsing bubble, a mile across by almost half that
length high
of material was crushed into matter no bigger than a London
double decker bus. What
mathematicians
that were still alive tried every calculation they could to figure out how
it
was
even
possible
.
B
ubble bombs were dropped on every major metropolitan area on the planet. The effects were devastating and instantaneous.
Hundreds
of millions died in what the aliens called a war, whereas humanity saw it as wholesale slaughter. The few thousand jets that were able to be mustered and flown did some damage but not enough to stop the carnage. Two days after the bombings ceased, the ground troops began to land
. R
ight as
people thought the worst was over, as the old adage goes, they hadn’t seen anything yet.
Devastator
troops didn’t distinguish
between combatants and civilians or domestic animals for that matter. They shot at everything that moved.
Indian Hill suffered no damage in those first few days of the occupation. But Boston
twelve
miles
northe
ast
was for the most part a memory now.
Th
at
was something even die hard Yankees fans would not have ever wished.
All communications had ceased from the once major metropolitan area because there was
no one
or nothing to deliver a message. The aliens set up one of their major headquarters a little south of Boston in Dedham
.
R
esistance was brief and for the most part futile. People did harbor some hope when they realized their weapons could inflict damage but that was briefly lived when the return fire
started
. Scouting reports and shortwave communications made the reality even more disconcerting than what many had only imagined as being the worst case scenario. The only major city left standing on the eastern seaboard of the United States was Washington
DC
and that more as a political
maneuver
than an oversight. The aliens
,
it seemed
,
wanted the carnage to stop almost as much as humanity did, but for far more sinister reas
ons, at the rate people were dy
ing it would become increasingly difficult to be able to harvest
them as a
valuable resource. The President acquiesced, there was no choice, he either surrendered or watched what little was left of his country crumble, there would be no
third
term fo
r him
even if it was allowable under the current Constitution
. The aliens mustered their
biggest forces
in what was once the hub of the free world, every
American
monument was torn down. Every flag replaced and every remaining person was interred in make
-
shift holding areas. Many died in the first few days of captivity
,
most because of shock and hopelessness Many
more
would wish that they had gone out th
at
way
rather
th
a
n endure the horrors about to be unleashed.