Clearing Force, Page 3

a city that had just become far more dangerous than anything we could possibly have imagined only a few hours ago. They had also decided that it was time to flee the city and had planned on leaving with us this morning. At least Odeler’s wife and kids were relatively safe, with my wife and kids in her parent’s condominium.

  We were doing an ammunition check when, from below us, the same shrill steam whistle type noise we had heard before sounded. Carefully, we all peered over the short wall to see what was coming next. Like before, the few remaining creatures we could see began rapidly scurrying away from the area. When I saw that there were no longer dividers in what had formerly been the grid just inside the vessel all I could think of was how big could one of these things be?

  Then the first of the new creatures leapt out of the ship. It re-defined the word huge! Each opening in the side of the ship had to be close to forty feet wide and twenty tall. This creature almost completely filled the opening! It was completely covered in startlingly bright blue and silver feathers, and when it leapt off the vessel we could clearly see six short, stubby legs on the side facing us. After it landed, two heads popped out of concealment inside its body and both emitted a roar of challenge, or perhaps pleasure that sounded like the largest, loudest, deepest bass ever heard on Earth throughout its history.

  Then it began moving. You would expect a creature this large to be slow and you would be wrong, dead wrong! With deliberate intention the first creature quickly ran across the street and rammed into the heavy brick wall of the building it had chosen. When it didn’t penetrate the first time, it backed up and then rammed the same, exact, position again!

  The thick brick wall had begun to crumble under the massive creature’s assault when it suddenly appeared to change tactics. It turned and began to slowly walk with its side brushing the buildings wall while generating a horrendous amount of noise. When it moved far enough forward so I could see the results of this strange tactic the tactic wasn’t so strange after all. The wall appeared to have exploded inward and there was now a wide open pathway into the building!

  Through my scope I could see people scattered all over the floor. Some were struggling to move but most appeared to be either unconscious or dazed by whatever this creature had done. Then, out of the rear of the creature, another head appeared along with several long, slender, highly flexible, tentacle like appendages. The tentacles flowed into the building, grabbed a victim with their opposed two fingered clawed pincer by simply transfixing the victim like a butterfly pinned to a display board!

  Then the tentacle withdrew taking its bleeding, screaming, victim with it, placed the victim in the rearmost heads large mouth, and went back into the building for another as the mouth quickly chewed and swallowed its meal. By the time the next tentacle arrived at the creature’s mouth with another screaming meal, it was ready to receive it.

  I had seen heavy objects falling onto the creatures back as it demolished the wall without apparently hurting it at all but I wanted to see if I could kill this creature with a head shot. I carefully aligned my shot at the rearmost head since that was the one I had the best view of. Even though the head was constantly moving it kept moving in the same pattern so I waited patiently until I had identified its pattern and gently caressed my trigger.

  According to my laser rangefinder the distance was 436 yards, which was pretty close to point blank for the rifle I was firing. Through my scope I saw where the bullet impacted the things head, there was a puff of crushed brick and mortar dust when it hit, but the bullet merely bounced off!

  For whatever reason, I decided to try again, only this time at a far harder target, the beast’s eye! I carefully aligned my shot, after all I was attempting to shoot at a moving target less than two inches wide at over 400 yards, and, after saying a short prayer, felt the butt stock of my rifle impact my shoulder. It was obvious that I had hit my target when the creature seemed to explode with noise, an incredibly horrible, unbelievably loud, noise that had glass shattering everywhere around the area. Even twenty-two stories up, the noise was so loud that we were temporarily deafened by it, despite the hearing protection we were all wearing.

  Then, across the street, the building it had been standing next to, began to collapse straight down, as if it’s supporting structure on the first floor was no longer there! At the first motion of the collapse all of the creature’s heads and appendages disappeared inside its body, including its legs! Seconds after the collapse was complete, even before the dust had settled enough so you could see, we could hear another loud discharge of noise, once again rendering us temporarily deaf.

  The results were spectacular. We could feel thuds as heavy objects impacted the building below us. We also saw, in the early light of dawn, massive chunks of brick and concrete flying over the roof of the building we were on and crashing into the buildings behind us! All I knew for certain was that I might have injured that monster, but I certainly hadn’t killed it and, judging by its reaction, all I had done was piss it off!

  The dust was settling and being blown away by the gentle breeze, but it was almost ten minutes before I could see the ground below us and my hearing had come back. Down below the ship had continued unloading more of these huge monsters and they quickly spread out choosing a building of their own to begin doing what the first creature had done.

  JJ looked over the wall and said “We have one of those things headed to our building so we need to get out of here, now!”

  I glanced down and yelled “Let’s go, leave the stairway at twenty one, we’ll have to risk the elevator, otherwise we don’t have a prayer!” With that, I began running with my friends to the maintenance door we had gotten onto the roof through.

  It was rapidly becoming brighter as the sun continued to rise out of the ocean and, for whatever reason, I glanced upward and saw one of those huge flying things rapidly dropping claws first towards me. Without thinking I stopped, raised my rifle to my shoulder, and fired at the creature’s leathery abdomen, all in one swift motion.

  The creature emitted a loud scream of protest as it continued its drop towards me, only adjusting its descent because I had stopped running. I could see purplish black blood starting to pour out of where my first shot had hit the animal, as I calmly adjusted my aim upward and sent another bullet hurling towards the creatures open needle tooth filled mouth.

  My bullet tore through the creatures head spraying blood, brains and gore everywhere as it passed through the creature and exited while tearing a large chunk of bone and flesh off the top of its head. I dove away from where I had stopped as the creature slammed lifelessly onto the roof behind me. As I got up I thought to myself that at least these things can be killed and then I glanced upward.

  Two more of the huge monsters were silently dropping claws first towards me. This time I did the only sane thing, I ran like all the furies of hell were after me toward the maintenance door, because they were!

  I dove through the open door using my body to protect my rifle when I landed. Behind me I heard a loud, infuriated shriek as the two animals attacked the roof over my head. Unlike the heavy reinforced concrete floor below my feet, the maintenance shed had only thin metal underneath the tarred asphalt roofing material, and these animals were rapidly tearing through it.

  I quickly got off the floor and ran down the stairs. My men were patiently standing and waiting for the elevator to arrive when I slammed the door shut behind me and joined them. I glanced through the glass window behind the receptionist’s desk into the law office that surrounded the elevators, and could see that the exterior windows were all shattered and glass was strewn everywhere throughout the outer part of the building.

  My attention was rapidly drawn back to the elevator as we all moved our rifles towards the door as the “Dinging” noise announced the elevators arrival. As the doors opened we were all pleased to see that it was indeed empty. I think we had all pictured a mass of the little creatures swarming out looking to make us dinner.

  As we e
ntered we all knew that we were taking one hell of a chance. The other huge creature had collapsed that building in less than five minutes, if the one attacking the front of this building did the same thing, we had no chance of running down forty-four flights of stairs in that amount of time, so our only hope of survival was to take the elevator to the basement where we had at least some chance of finding a tunnel to another building.

  We didn’t even consider trying to exit through the door opposite the front door. After seeing thousands of very deadly monsters exit the ship and spreading out, moving on the surface would be worse than dangerous, it would be suicidal. Personally if I was going to die, having a large building collapse on top of me was preferable to being eaten by those things, but I had no intention of letting either happen if I had anything to say about it.

  Unexpectedly the elevator stopped at floor ten and, as the elevator “Dinged” its warning signal, we all faced the doors with our rifles ready. I felt my finger inadvertently tightening on my trigger when the doors began to slide open exposing a somewhat disheveled man staring in horror at the men in the elevator with their rifles all pointed at him.

  He managed to stutter out