Overrun Read online

  “C’mon man, let’s go,” one of his squad said patting him on the back and brushing past him towards the scientists.

  By now some of the scientists had looked up and seen them near the doorway. They began yelling and throwing their arms wildly about. Some ran for the roof ledge while others dropped submissively to the ground. A few grabbed for weapons and were quickly shot in the center of their chests.

  Additional quick bursts of weapons fire silenced more of their cries before the bedlam that had begun on the rooftop increased to an even more frenzied state.

  Slavik pulled out his sidearm and shot one in the back that had escaped past his men and tried to scale down the building’s side. He let out a relieved breath when the scientist fell back onto the rooftop rather than pitching forward and crashing down across the street.

  Slavik stepped back towards the doorway and took a quick look around.

  "We're still missing some!" he yelled to his men. “We have to get them all. Don’t let them escape!”

  "We've got 'em," a not-so-confident voice answered him before being drowned out by gunfire.

  Two others scurried beneath some of the equipment. Another pressed back into the shadows trying not to be seen. A few scampered to the rooftop ledge searching desperately for a means of escape.

  "Damn," Slavik swore to himself.

  Things were getting out of hand. Everything should have been over by now, and his men should have been already off the roof. With some of the scientists still alive, the mission had now become a hunt - something there was no time for if they were going to escape the facility undetected and alive.

  He pointed his men in different directions along the roof while he walked its center searching for those that remained. A quick shot came from his left. Another flew from his right. He turned to see a signal from the soldier furthest down the roof’s edge that only two scientists now remained.

  Slavik slowly made his way to the edge of the rooftop. He panned his weapon around searching the area through its sights for signs of the missing men. Seeing nothing, he took a deep breath and peered cautiously over the side of the building.

  Below just out of his arm’s reach, a panicked scientist clung desperately to a thin ledge and waved frantically at a military vehicle passing below.

  Slavik shot him quickly in the back of the head and lunged to grab his body. He snagged the man’s shirt collar with his fingertip before he fell. The dead scientist’s legs swung out and away from the building. The sudden burden of his weight yanked Slavik halfway over the ledge.

  But Slavik did not let go. With white knuckles, he gripped the roof ledge while another squad member dove to anchor his feet. Slavik's knees banged hard against the building’s crumbling brick sending a sharp searing jolt through his body that shook loose his grip.

  Hanging upside down and being held by his ankles, Slavik watched the body plummet to the ground. It landed with a loud crash across the hood of another passing jeep.

  The soldier holding him pulled him quickly back over the ledge and to his feet. They both snatched up their assault rifles and started to shoot. The vehicle quickly backed away from the building disintegrating beneath the bombardment of their weapons fire.

  Sand and dirt churned the air around. The scientist’s body rolled from across the hood and landed on its side across the shredded terrain.

  Slavik squeezed off his last four shots sending a trail of exploding roadway into the air after the fleeing jeep. None of them finding their mark, the jeep quickly turned a corner and disappeared down the deserted street.

  Slavik threw his empty assault rifle to the ground in disgust. It made a loud clack against the rooftop.

  "Tempest and Bloodshoe, get that last motherfucker!” he screamed at the two men next to him. “We’re outta time! We have to go now!”

  "We’re clear here, sir," Bloodshoe answered him. “Everyone up here is on the ground. Either scouts gave us a wrong count or one got away. But there’s no one left up here but us."

  “Son of bitch,” Slavik said quietly and then raised his voice again. “Alright, get them down to the incinerator room. We’ll cover up the best we can up here. Dump the bodies and get the hell out of here on foot.”

  Slavik backed towards the door still looking at the rooftop.

  “We’ve probably got five minutes before the crew of that jeep reports us in and brings down the house.”

  Slavik turned away from the men and left the rooftop. Tempest and Bloodshoe followed after him. Each scanned their weapons across the lab searching for the one that might have been missed.

  They backed their way into the stairway and turned to find the members of Knight’s squad that had been sent to investigate the extended firefight on the roof.

  Slavik was there relaying to the lead man what had just transpired and that slipping out alone and on foot was now their only chance to escape undiscovered into the darkness of the surrounding night.

  * * *

  Knight and Baxter had just dumped the last of the soldiers killed in the security wing into the blazing furnace when Slavik and his men burst into the incinerator chamber with their weapons raised.

  "It didn't work!" Slavik yelled. His voice broke abruptly into the grim nightmare the two Vulture officers were performing in the room. He stopped to cough and vomit from the smell of the burning flesh.

  "We didn't get them all. One, maybe two, got away. We're going to have to blast the building and run. We don’t have much time before reinforcements arrive."

  Knight's expression remained calm and unchanged at the news.

  "Tempest and Baxter, set up the detonators,” he barked. “I want nothing left on the rooftop or in the security wing. Knock the whole fucking thing down. I don’t give a fuck. Then follow your individual escape routes out. Go now!"

  The two men left the room without a response.

  When they were gone, Knight, Slavik and Bloodshoe, the remaining members of the two teams, dug into their packs for the small metallic containers that contained their predetermined individual escape routes.

  Finding his first, Slavik punched it against the wall and dropped the cracked plastic on the floor. When he did, a loud shot ripped through the air.

  Slavik whirled around to see Knight fall to the floor clutching what remained of his left leg in his hand.

  Slavik raised his weapon, but Bloodshoe had already downed the missing scientist from the rooftop in a blast of weapons fire.

  Bloodshoe ran and scooped up the scientist’s quivering still-dying body and hauled it across his back. Taking less than two steps, he dumped it into the incinerator to burn with the others.

  Slavik turned back to where Knight writhed in agony on the ground. His left leg was torn in half below the knee. Sweat beaded in a solid line across his forehead, and his lips trembled from the shock.

  He then noticed a small hole just below Knight’s neck and a much larger wound in the center of his back.

  "Orders still stand,” Knight gasped through clenched teeth. "Leave the jeeps and your gear. Separate and get out. Blow the place when you're clear."

  Slavik looked down at Knight. His body shook with both rage and fear at his feet.

  Overwhelmed by another sudden urge to retch, Slavik turned away. He hung his head between his legs and tried to spit away the vomit and bile that caked his throat. A sharp tug at the back of his leg made him turn back to face his dying commander on the floor.

  "Understand what happens if they find us here," Knight wheezed. "They will break anyone left back here alive. Everything must be completely…"

  Slavik yanked out his sidearm and shot him in the center of his forehead before he finished. He bent down and lugged his body across his shoulders.

  He and Bloodshoe avoided each other’s guilty stares while they dumped the last two corpses into the incinerator’s raging fire.

  Slavik watched Knight's body disappear in the heat. The flames crackled loud and hot.

  * * *
<
br />   Tempest and Baxter sprinted up two flights of stairs to a ground-level door on the opposite side of the building from their jeeps. They hurriedly set the explosives from their packs along the top of the stairwell and mounted a remote receiving unit along the wall.

  Tempest pressed a button in Baxter's backpack, and a light near the top of the remote cast a faint green glow through the darkened hall.

  "Five minutes," Tempest whispered to him. "Should at least give us a chance to get out."

  Bloodshoe nodded in acknowledgment. Their eyes locked briefly as they conveyed silent farewells in the darkness outside the building. Each wordlessly wished the other well.

  Baxter turned around silently while Tempest activated the final switch that would send arming instructions to the explosives. In less than five minutes, the compound would be gone.

  They shook hands while sirens wailed in the distance then separated to escape to the fates awaiting them in the night.

  * * *

  Slavik ran from the incinerator room along the ground floor to the rear of the building. He threw a chair through a large window and dove into a darkened alley leading away from the facility. He knew the explosives set by his men would soon ignite.

  Sounds of sirens, vehicles, and soldiers’ voices rushed from the distance. Slavik hoped they would arrive in time for the blast. He leapt to his feet and tossed his backpack containing his own explosive supply back into the building. He jabbed his weapon into its holster and sprinted for the protection of the night.

  He had only run three steps when something grabbed at his foot. Intense pain surged through his entire lower body knocking him face first into the dirt. He looked back in horror to see only blood and shattered bone at the end of his ankle. His right foot was completely gone.

  Twenty feet away, a soldier lowered his weapon and ran towards where he tried to stand back up again from the ground. A second man behind the first centered an assault rifle over his shoulder directly across Slavik's chest.

  Slavik grabbed his own weapon and jabbed its barrel into his mouth. Before he could squeeze the trigger, the approaching soldier dove across his squirming body and ripped the rifle from his grasp.

  The soldier spread his arms and legs across Slavik's back. Using his weight and bulky gear, he rolled him over and pressed him face down into the ground.

  A jeep pulled quickly up. Two soldiers jumped out and hurriedly grabbed Slavik by the shoulders and tossed him in the back. They signaled the soldier near the building still covering the area with his weapon, and he also ran to jump onboard.

  The last thing Slavik remembered before blackness overtook him was the eruption of a giant fireball tearing through the area they had just left.

  Shards of glass spewed from the exploding building showering the racing jeep and its unprotected occupants. The soldier holding Slavik relaxed his grip for a quick second to yank at a piece that buried itself into the back of his shin. The building structures they raced past echoed with his scream.

  The jeep sped to the J.G.U. compound not far down the road. The J.G.U. soldiers stared in silence at the flaming building falling behind them in the distance. With his face pressed by strong hands to its metal floor, the rest of Slavik's body bounced violently about the rear of the jeep.

  * * *

  To his dismay, Slavik awoke bloodied, bruised and bound to a chair at the center of a large empty room. He blinked several times trying to focus on the sight before him.

  A short distance away, two rows of soldiers faced him. About ten men in all, their rifles rested across their shoulders and pressed tautly against their ears. Their eyes squinted through rifle sights centered at his head and the middle of his chest.

  “Your country!" An English speaking voice boomed loudly from somewhere within the room. “What rogue country do you represent?! We all know you did not just come to be here on your own.”

  Slavik didn’t speak and stared dully at the men ahead.

  A loud “crack” echoed throughout the room. Smoke came from the weapon of one of the soldiers kneeling in the first row. A piece of steel ripped into the bone and flesh of Slavik's left knee.

  Slavik’s neck snapped back, and he shrieked in pain. His legs kicked up in the air toppling his chair over backwards. A soldier standing further back in the room and not holding a weapon walked slowly to Slavik’s chair and pulled him back up.

  "Who are you?" the voice thundered again.

  Slavik’s lips set in a thin line, and he again refused to speak.

  Another shot tore into his opposite knee. His body jerked and wobbled from the impact. This time his chair did not fall. Slavik stared through half-open eyes at his bloodied legs. He couldn’t tell if he was actually talking or just imagining it in his head.

  A third shot took away his left ear. A fourth tore into his shoulder. The fifth sailed directly into the center of his heart. He was already dead by the time the sixth and final bullet slammed into his brain.

  The members of the firing squad lowered their weapons and walked away. When they were gone, the two men from the back of the room approached Slavik’s body.

  They stepped carefully over the fresh pools of blood it had left on the floor and wrapped large pieces of plastic all around. Rolling him on his side across a stretcher, they carried him from the room. A trail of blood gruesomely marked their path.

  They brought him to the bottom of a darkened stairwell and stopped before two large unlocked doors. One of the men pulled the door closest to him open slightly. With a quick twist of their wrists, they dumped Slavik’s body in.

  Slavik’s body landed in a disfigured lump next to three bloody corpses of the other members of his squad. Discharge from their freshly opened wounds seeped through the holes of the plastic and across the steel floor.

  The unclosed eyes of Baxter, Tempest and Bloodshoe stared out from beneath the reddened plastic. They looked out unknowingly into the blackness unaware of what they had unleashed and what their failure that day had ultimately caused to have begun.

  Chapter 3

  United States Administration Dome

  Two figures moved lightly about the darkness.

  Daniel J. Baldwin, minister of state and most senior adviser to the President, lowered himself into a chair. Down the hall amidst the shadows, War Minister Peter Faulken walked towards the outside door of the presidential office.

  The light scratch of a match followed by the quiet pop of its sudden flame interrupted the solemn silence permeating the empty corridor. The thin orange dot marking the tip of the lit cigar bobbed up and down the darkness while Faulken moved through the hall.

  Baldwin slumped in the chair and let out a long breath. Another thirty seconds passed and then his voice interrupted the silence.

  "Is the President aware?"

  The flaming tip of the cigar turned and came back towards him. Faulken’s heavy shoes dragged roughly across the hard floor. For a moment it was the only sound.

  "The President has been partially briefed on what has occurred."

  "Partially briefed on what has occurred?" Baldwin said with a waver of panic edging his voice. "That's not my goddamn question. There is more going on here than what has just occurred. It goes way beyond the situation we are dealing with right now."

  "His ignorance in certain matters is completely necessary in the eventuality..."

  "In the eventuality any of our illegal foreign military activities are discovered?!" Baldwin said hotly from his seat. "Is that what you are about to say? Ever since construction first began on the domes, mere presence on any land that is not entirely your own is considered a trespass. We should not goddamn be even out there! For God’s sake even presence on land controlled by your allies is considered suspect.”

  “The President’s denials will only be more real if he believes them to be truth himself. The world has become too frightening to risk anything else."

  "This is not something we should be fucking around with! By operating outside the
presidency, we are contributing to this fright."

  The war minister did not immediately respond. His cigar tip glowed a brighter orange from another deep inhale.

  "The President is not aware, because we cannot risk him changing what has already been set in motion. This was agreed upon long ago. To ensure danger does not arise."

  "You are wrong. Danger has arisen. And it is here."

  Another silence followed before Baldwin’s voice again filled the empty echo of the corridor.

  "You know they're calling it a genocide,” he said accusation coloring his tone. “It's being called a genocide by both people in here and rumors starting to circulate on the outside."

  "A genocide?" The glowing cigar tip dipped sharply away from Faulken’s mouth. "It’s far from that. It is the only way for this country to survive. The only way this world will survive. Rumors need to be handled until the plan has been fully implemented. That time is coming soon."

  "It’s not possible,” Baldwin responded. “Not anymore. Many already know. Uprisings are imminent. Whether it comes from the outside or somewhere within. Dissenting factions are beginning to grow."

  "People on the inside will never revolt. Their presence here attests to their full consent and support of what is about to occur. It's the price and responsibility they all chose to accept before coming to live within."

  "Their presence does not pledge their allegiance to a genocide of those left behind."

  “Actually, yes it does. Those that came in, came in to survive. The ones they left behind…they’ve always known their fate.”

  For several minutes neither man spoke.

  "Did you ever stop to think about what we have already lost?"

  "I agree. Much has been lost.” Faulken let out a breath and inhaled deeply again. “But much is also at stake. The future of the United States has been in great jeopardy ever since the J.G.U. rose to technological power. We were lucky to keep up with them in dome construction like we did. We are lucky to still be here at all."

  "Many whole countries are still living on the outside," Baldwin’s voice began to sound tired.