Chapter 138: Apex (1/2)

Moise woke up early and tired, just like everyone else. Today was the day.

The regiments stood and gathered in morning prayer, then they had breakfast. It was the best breakfast he ever had with juicy bacon, boiled eggs, and bread that was not yet too stale. They even had some decent coffee. It was a shame that he had so much trouble keeping it down.

Today was the day.

And it started slow.

All the men made ready at their own pace. He had a pouch, pockets bursting at the seams with cartridges, and a canteen. It was sunny and a little bit cloudy with a nice breeze coming from the Atlantic that brought with it a fresh smell. Flocks of gulls quarreled somewhere behind him.

His regiment went to the front and center, descending in single file through ditches and passages defended with raised earth and sharpened wood branches. The going was slow. They had several lines, with quick, easily covered access to allow entire lines of combatants to retreat deeper into the fortifications. An army could not take them. Hell, with those ships behind them, rebels would break their teeth on their fortifications by the hundreds. But they were not facing rebels.

Moise finally went through the last passage and arrived in front of the moat. It was a nice moat, filled with sharpened stakes. He had cut the ones in front of him with his own fingers until they bled with splinters. It was his spot. Iwan took the one to his left. Moise was the rightmost defender of his squad. White folks took the spot to his right. They were a grumpy bunch with antiquated pistols and brand new rifles someone had thrown them out of pity. A tall man with a long, wispy white beard threw him a disparaging look and shook his head.

Well, the devil take you too, old codger.

They settled to wait.

That was, he thought, the worst part. Men sat where they were, their uniforms a bit dusty despite efforts to clean them. Smoke rose from the bastards who had filched tobacco somewhere along the way. Sergeant Freeman took a large pipe from one of his inner pockets and puffed on it contemplatively. Some soldiers prayed while others talked in hushed voices.

Moise decided to pray. It could not hurt. But after half an hour he had gone through every hymn he knew three times and still hadn’t found salvation.

He looked up the trench. There was not a damn thing to see, just mangled grass and stumps for half a mile.

They waited.

Moise eventually surrendered to boredom and joined a game of dice. They bet cartridges since there was nothing else around. Moise won three, then lost seven in a row. Above him, the lazy orb of the sun finally reached its zenith.

Cooks walked down the line with water barrels and stew. They were also handed a piece of bread. Moise could barely taste it.

Behind them, something happened.

He could feel it along his spine.

It started as a hum, then gradually grew in intensity until he felt it like a vast noise at the edge of his hearing, a ghost of some ear-splitting shriek he could not quite ignore. There was some devilry at work here. He had heard of it from some of the folks before they were scolded.

Evil worshippers.

But the monsters were real, or so the newspapers said, or at least that was what Jupe, who could read, had claimed.

Moise scowled and looked forward. The demons he would face were very real. Better to think about that first.

They sure were taking their time though.

Early afternoon came. The sun was high and the temperature had gone to pleasant. It was so calm here, with the wind in his face and the sun warming his khepi, that he started to doze off. The tension of the past few days was getting to him.

It was then that the entire line shifted.

Moise felt it in the posture of the men around him. Suddenly, all rifles were pointing forward.

There were creatures galloping far in the distance. White ones.

They were just tiny dots at the edge of the field right now.

Moise’s stomach suddenly filled with ice and dropped into his shoes. Cold sweat erupted over his brow and his lungs suddenly cried for air. Monsters were coming, and they were taking their goddamn sweet time.

“Remember your orders,” Freeman bellowed, “shoot when you have a shot. Not before, not after. Don’t miss or I’ll throw you sorry halfwits over the parapet!”

“Sarge, what’s a parapet?”

“That’s where your ass is going if you don’t aim!”

Time passed with agonizing slowness. The distant shapes resolved themselves into eight creatures, seven small ones like he had seen and another that moved with a hunch. It was so large that it kept with the others through sheer size.

“Damn…”

Several imprecations echoed throughout the lines before the NCOs screamed at the idiots. Moise relaxed his shoulder and placed the barrel of his repeater on top of the earthworks. He breathed slowly.

They were still a bit far.

Someone shot to his left. Freeman yelled and smacked him. Moise could only hear the sound of flesh hitting flesh, babbling excuses, and a few snickers from the assholes to his right. The things were coming. He picked one at random and lined up the sights. He could see nothing but the smooth expanse of steel of the barrel and the blurred form of the abomination barreling down on him. Time slowed down, until he could feel every powerful thump of his heart resonating through his body.

Someone else pulled the trigger, then the entire line erupted in an acrid blue mist. Moise may have hit his target, or he may have narrowly missed it. It did not matter. It would not have mattered. The almost solid cloud of lead shredded the attacking force like buckshot through a mouse. There was a red, pinkish cloud and flying bits, then it was over.

“Hurrah!” someone yelled. The cry picked up across the entire camp. Hurrah, hurrah! The defiant roar surged down the hill and spread through the surrounding meadows. It spoke of the courage of man. It was a torch in the darkness of a cave. It was fire, unity, strength of arms to reveal the nightmare for what it was, the shadow of a much smaller, much more lonesome beast.

They could do this.

“Alright, alright folks, settle down. Settle down I said! Save that nice enthusiasm y’all got for the rest of’em.”

Moise moved his arms a bit to work the kinks in them. He pushed an extra cartridge in the chamber to replace the one he had lost and caressed the ‘IGL’ image with his finger. Three letters with an eagle on top.

They could really do this. Just had to stay calm.

Twenty minutes later, another group popped from the bushes and ended up much like the first. Moise did not even shoot. There was no need.

Then fifteen minutes later, another came.

Then another.

At two, there were continuous shots all across the line.

It was three when the first man died, a freak friendly fire apparently. Moise saw the covered form being carried up on a stretcher on a passage to the left of him. Blood dripped from the back of the head.

“Moise if you got time to gawk you got time to clean your gun,” Freeman told him in a low voice. He looked at the field in front of him. Most of the pits had been revealed by now, having successfully slowed down the horde. The drones were forced to jump above or around them which slowed them down ever so slightly. He remembered that they had explosives around somewhere, which was why their artillery was supposedly still silent. Prayers rang in the air coming from his right again.

A wave rushed from the edge of the forest.

It was the biggest one yet, easily a hundred individuals spread in a sort of herd.

“Hold fire until you get a shot!” Freeman yelled.

There were small and large drones, some with strange bone plates on their chests and faces. They were tougher, but they did not stop bullets.

Damn it all, but Moise was getting used to it.

He lined his shot at a smaller drone almost to the front of him, and almost dropped his rifle when the creature started jumping to the sides.

“Bloody hell!”

The smaller drones were running haphazardly in strange patterns. Moise focused and pulled the trigger as his target landed. It hit the chest. Someone else’s bullet caught it in the leg and made the creature stumble, then a few more shots took it out entirely. The larger one fell as well with a burst head.

One drone with a missing arm reached the line to his left.

It jumped and landed in the ditch, twitching from a ruined chest.

Freeman stepped up and drew his brand new revolver. He shot the head once and the creature’s erratic moves stopped.

“Remember that those bastards like to play dead. What are y’all looking at? Eyes front, damn you!”

Moise obeyed and saw something he had never seen before.

The drones were retreating.

“Bloody hell that ain’t good,” the white man to his right said. Moise turned to him with some curiosity. Wasn’t it a good thing when your enemy flees?

“Wachu looking at, nigger?”

Moise returned his attention to the field and wondered if he could get away with shooting the bastard and passing it as an accident. Probably not.

Silence descended upon the field, and, for the first time in hours, calm returned. The cloud of spent powder lifted ever so slightly. The smell of the sea returned timidly beneath that of fire. He could almost see the sky.

Then there was a sound like nails on a piece of wood. It erupted all across the yet untouched meadows. Moise’s mind froze for the second time today when a thin white line appeared between the green of the trees and the brown of upturned earth. He leaned forward despite his best efforts. The line expanded and thickened. It turned into a squirming tide of pale flesh. The ground vibrated under their feet.

“Hold fire!”

Fear returned.

Moise placed his rifle against the earthworks and tried to forget that the creatures could shake off grievous wounds for a few seconds. He had never felt so alone in his entire goddamn life.

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder, forcing a jump.

“Steady now, and watch those ears of yours because we are going loud!” Freeman yelled. There were a few whoops in the line but that was it.

The things were closer now.

Closer.

There were so many of the damn buggers, and they had bigger ones that moved sinuously on four limbs. It was bad. Real bad.

They came in range, and the world turned upside down.

Moise stumbled back, hands on his whistling ears. There were little dark dots in the air, far above him, which he realized were pieces of soil. The air kept shaking with loud explosions left and right. One of them got really close and sent him stumbling again.

A piece of drone arm landed next to him. The dead limb gathered into a fist slowly enough for him to see every muscle fiber contracting. The claws pierced skin and let out pinkish fluid.

Moise stood back up. There was a lot of smoke. It took some time for the wind to disperse enough of the thick white stuff to see what was left.

From the edge of the earthworks to the forest, the ground was craters and debris. There was nothing left of the horde but a scattering of corpses, few of them in one piece. Some people said things, but Moise did not hear them clearly. His focus was on one of the smaller drones back, far away from him. The creature had been the furthest of all mines and it climbed to its feet slowly, painfully.

Despite the distance, despite the impossibility of it, Moise and the creature’s orbs met for a second. The distant buzz of the beacon at the back of his head became loud enough to drown every other sound in existence. it was an imperious order to come forward, and Moise took an involuntary step back. The call was so strong...

Then the moment was broken, and he was back to being just a Massachusetts boy away from home and in far above his head. The survivors of the assault on the monster side crawled back to the trees. There was a lull.

“Reload, reload and drink a bit of water if you can,” Freeman bellowed, “steady y’all, this ain’t over yet.”

Moise blinked sweat away from his eyes. Some of the trees in the distance were moving as if a storm raged among them.

Moise had built confidence over the past week. The stone promontory had turned into a nigh impregnable fortress. Hundreds of drones had died without slaying a single one of them. This faith evaporated in an instant.

The land came alive with frenzied flesh. Thick, bone-plated monsters came first in a line three-creatures thick that covered the entire plain. The ground shook again.

Behind him, cannons roared.

The guns vomited steel at a range that made missing impossible. Canister shots dug bloody furrows in an ever-moving mass. The fallen disappeared under the galloping claws of those that came behind.

As soon as they got near, fast-moving drones overtook the larger ones. They made use of the now-ruined terrain, jumping and turning as they went. Despite the acrobatics, none of them ever got in the way of another. Moise waited, then shot the ones in front of him.

Good thing is, he could not miss. There was just no free space for the bullet to escape to.

His first target crashed with a pierced shoulder. Another fell as well though he was not sure if it was his bullet or someone else’s. The din of detonations deafened him, just as smoke made his eyes burn. You could not hear a thing under the incredible racket of so many barrels roaring their fury, the wrath of mankind wielded in censure of whatever thing had spawned the foe. Moise spent one second considering how done-for he would have been without the repeater.

The wave crashed into their fortifications.

A first creature rammed itself into the sharpened stake and grabbed at him. Moise shot it in the head and slammed his back against the earthen wall behind him, frantically pushing more cartridges into his burning-hot gun. Another creature jumped over the first one but fell with its torso mangled. The soldiers on the tier above were covering him.

The creature twitched.

Freeman appeared from the side and shot it with his revolver, then moved further along the line. They were not stopping. There was a spurt of blood as someone got unlucky. Another soldier was thrown over the barricade and down into the gibbering horde below. His scream was cut short.

Another drone climbed on top of the first.

Moise chambered his first of four rounds knowing that he would be too late.

There was a fire projectile, and the creature’s head exploded. Pieces of bone and humor ran down his uniform’s trousers. He turned around and saw a woman dressed in white standing behind and above. Fire flared from her fingers and found heads, each projectile aimed with deadly accuracy. He did not stop to wonder what she was using, or why there were men with shields covering her.

Using the lull, he started to shoot to the side to lessen the burden on his allies. A drone smashed through the now-demolished stakes to his right and almost skewered the bearded man, but Moise shot it down. He never hesitated. It was man versus monster now.

And the pressure lessened.

They were killing drones faster than the monsters could come. Folks in white and red uniforms wielded strange weapons. Boneplate cracked, flesh bubbled under the onslaught. The larger specimens had all fallen.

The tide of flesh turned to a trickle, then stopped as the creatures withdrew. He watched, mesmerized, as distant drones started to drag their dead back into the forest.

“What the fuck are they doing?” he grumbled to no one in particular.

“Reusing the flesh of the dead,” the bearded white man said as he, too, reloaded and checked his gun. His companions muttered prayers.

“Those devilish abominations use flesh to strengthen some of their numbers. And they got a lot of it alright. There was no need to have single strong creatures before, but now there is, and so they will come. It learns, that devil. It learns and it adapts.”

Moise moved aside as men ran with stretchers to the back line. The nurses knew how to stop the poison that turned folks into monsters, so long as they were not dead, or so he was told. It would not help some of the poor bastards he saw being carried, that was for sure, what with all the blood.

There was another short lull. Moise reloaded and drank from his canteen to try and wash the smoke and horrid stench of drone blood from his throat, in vain. There were a few sparse shots here and there that made him wince. Supposedly, the drones could not turn a headless body. Folks were making sure.

The man to his left, Iwan, silently gave him a repeater.

“What’s that for?”

“It was Jupe’s, but he’s wounded so it’s yours now. You don’t have to reload so often.”

“Alright then.”

They waited, and waited some more until late afternoon. The drones tried the same thing, but the assault was repelled with so many losses that the ground before him could only be seen when an artillery shell revealed it before corpses covered it again. Moise missed his first round. It went wide, a bit too high, probably hit something anyway.

As the creatures pulled back once more, he could not help but think that the cannons were slowing done, and so were the men and, amazingly, women in black or red. He thought he knew why as he gingerly touched the barrel of his gun. It was burning to the touch. The heat was starting to get to him and he emptied his cantine, then took a discreet piss against the earthworks.

Then it was time again.

“How many of the fuckers can there be?” he complained.

They waited once more. More wounded were brought up. In some places, drone corpses were piled so high that they obstructed the view, but no one moved out to push them away. He did not blame them.

There was a rumble.

Things started to emerge from the treeline, things that did not belong on this world. They were so large that he could see them clearly, as far as they were. He had seen engravings of elephants. They did not hold a candle to the behemoths now charging towards them.

The cannons roared, the strange weapons lashed, but still the creatures kept going until, somewhere behind him, a signal was given.

The ship guns opened.

In front of Moise, a crimson flower of death bloomed on top of the beasts. The screaming inferno devoured ranks upon ranks of drones and left behind only charred husks. The devastation they wreaked defied description. Moise’s repeater felt like a toy. The behemoths fell one by one until more than thirty of their carcasses dotted the field, then the rest smashed through the first two layers of fortifications without stopping.

Moise fell to his right under a shower of splinters. Pinkish fluid pooled by his feet until his very ankles soaked. Drones were everywhere, climbing over the wall. That was when Iwan fell against him with a strange black spike through the neck.

“What the…”

Above, the woman screamed and fell back between the two shield-bearers. She removed a spike from her arm and resumed firing down. Moise grabbed his second rifle and shot a drone as it fell on sergeant Freeman. They were cut off from the rest of the regiment.

“First two barricades, fall back, fall back now!” someone yelled from behind.

Moise helped Freeman up. The older man was bleeding heavily, even had one of those spikes in his flank. They stumbled to the path up. Freeman still blew the brains out of the drones coming to them.

They passed under the barricade and to the next level. The white-bearded man had been waiting and shot a pursuer. The last defenders were making their way up. The battle was already raging there, and a flow of soldiers were climbing up and up under the cover of thrown blasting charges. There were bodies everywhere.

“Keep going!” a man in a fancy coat said as he blasted the foes with two engraved revolvers, each shot putting something down.

Moise kept going.

Up and up they went. Freeman was getting heavier, or he was growing more tired. They passed ranks of firing infantrymen and a few cannons with barrels so hot they had started to glow. An officer was arguing with a nurse in white as he passed by.

“You need to save some water for the wounded!”

“If we don’t cool those guns down, there won’t be any wounded to save!”

At the back, there were rows of hurt men covered in bandages around three large white tents. The air was thick with the cloying scent of blood. He noticed lines of covered bodies to the side.

A woman with white hair and red eyes grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Over here, help him down on that stretcher,” she ordered.

Moise did as instructed. Freeman winced as he lay.

“Got to remove the black stinger. Probably poisoned,” Moise said because he felt so goddamn useless.

The woman did not reply. She was busy applying a paste to Freeman’s shoulder where three puncture wounds leaked blood.

“No need. I know the score, boy,” the old sergeant said pointing at his flank, “ain’t no coming back from that one.”

Moise felt his eyes water even more now, probably all that powder in the air. Dammit.

Were they all going to die on that mount?

“None of that. You don’t give up, you hear? You don’t have the right to give up. I forbid it.”

“Yes, sarge, sorry sarge.”

“Mam, can you make sure that I don’t…”

The strange woman gave him something to hold, a cross of sorts.

“You won’t turn. You have my word. Hold tight to this.”

“Thank you. Now, boy, you go. Take this.”

Freeman pulled his buckle open and roared, removing the whole belt. Moise was left with the piece.

Freeman shoved his revolver in Moise’s palm.

“Now you go. Give them hell for me.”

“Yes sarge. Farewell.”

“Go with God, boy.”

Moise about-faced without a word. He realized that he had dropped his repeater somewhere along the way and picked up a piece some other idiot had discarded on the ground. He had one pouch of ammo left.

He climbed back down the hill into a hellscape of smoke and fury, dyed red under the setting sun.

Chaos had spread over the lower tiers, and that was where he stopped. Regiments had mixed. He found the white-bearded man near the port-side cliff and joined his side because why the hell not. There was a man with a shield and pistol by his side, and soldiers from other companies. He picked his targets and shot again, and again, and again, without stopping. Sometimes, the man with the shield would point at strange drones with an overly large right arm and black spikes on their back. Those were the assholes that had killed his friends. He picked them off one by one.

The drones retreated again. The din of battle gave way to a soft layer of moans and prayers. The sun was setting and its last scarlet rays kissed a scene of carnage the likes of which the world had never seen. Blood and corpses and mangled limbs for half a mile expanding in a cone towards a meadow on which a white blob was growing.

Men and women progressively stopped doing whatever it was they were busying themselves with. Artillery servants froze with water buckets in their hands. Cartridges stopped at the edge of chambers. Canteens remained in the air, their precious contents forgotten. Silence covered the camp like a thick layer until even the wounded kept their peace.

Night fell.

An enormous weight crashed upon Moise’s shoulder as the background scream that had lasted for so long that he had forgotten about it sputtered and died. The white blob on the horizon walked to them, a titan of unholy flesh, an aggregate of defiled bodies. It was massive as a temple. Each of its three-pronged limbs shook the earth as they descended to carry it forward. A myriad of black eyes covered most of its face, growing between and around bone plates like so many cancerous growths, but that was nothing compared to its sheer presence. The dominating, heavy aura pushed on Moise until all he could do was to whimper. The thing came, and no one shot. Not one cannon spat. Not one gun discharged. The camp remained unmoving.

Moise prayed for the strength to meet death on his feet. Behind the creature, drones of all sizes swarmed until they covered the plain.