McBride first shot Brown a middle finger, then waved to him. The two soldiers descended the hill on foot with pistols drawn. No enemy weapons rose to greet them.

  "Hold positions," McBride radioed.

  Dustin came within twenty feet of an elderly female Feranite standing perfectly still with her hands resting on the shoulders of a child. A ribbon in her hair made from a collection of nut shells and flowers fluttered in a gust of wind coming from the closing storm.

  The woman…the child…all of the Red Hands appeared frozen in time, their eyes wide open but just standing. Dustin could not even see signs of breathing. Rain fell. A pitter. A patter. More. The Red Hands started to shake. "Holy Christ, Dustin…"

  It seemed to McBride as if every member of the Feranite tribe stuck their fingers into an electric socket, causing their spines to wobble…their eyes to roll white…and their mouths to open and stretch as if made of rubber.

  "Agarn…back off…back off…"

  A horrible moan came from the hundreds of aliens along the reservoir; a moan coming from mouths that grew impossibly wide on heads that tilted back…and then split. Split open in two.

  "Holy fucking shit! Get outta here!"

  Rain fell harder and harder. The moan grew louder. The bodies shook faster. And up from the torn gashes in the Red Hand necks rose iron-like bars supporting big spheres. Vein-like strands of metal flowed out from that bar and ran along the arms and legs of each of the Feranites.

  The moan morphed from an animalistic cry into a digitalized sound seemingly born from computer speakers.

  The orbs split open like metallic Venus flytraps sporting daggers for teeth. Skin exploded and out came a trio of shiny legs with hydraulic muscles and round pads for feet.

  McBride's cavalry waited no more. Machine guns and carbines fired but they did not tear into skin, they ricocheted off mechanized units that had been born from flesh.

  As the storm broke and the deluge fell and the lightning sent flashes across the gorge, the Feranite race completed their transformation into the very thing they despised: technology. They changed from creatures at one with nature to something built from metal and gears and lenses where eyes once watched.

  Where their arms once hung came two metal pipes. No, not pipes; barrels.

  The rat-tat-tat of counter fire came from the mob of mechanized warriors out toward the cavalry. Explosive shells detonated in the belly of horses, shrapnel decimated riders, more mounts spooked and dashed away, most throwing their owners to the wet ground.

  As grenades fell into the mob of emerging monsters, two of the creatures died as the concussion from the explosives tore apart their new limbs and shredded circuitry. But those small victories proved no relief as the outnumbered horse soldiers suddenly faced a superior foe.

  Corporal Brown grabbed his commander's sleeve and pulled him up the ridge. McBride fired his gun as the nearest Red Hand finished its transition into an artificial beast. The metal bar that held the round mouth bent and the mechanical legs chased the hunter as parts of torn clothing and the remains of discarded flesh dropped off like a snake shedding its skin.

  Rounds from Dustin's pistol sparked off the chassis. A bear-trap-like mouth clamped down on the pistol and the arm holding it. Brown tried to help his friend and discharged his own gun at point blank range into the beast, to no effect. In exchange, the newly-born demon swung around one of its gun barrels and pumped ordnance into Agarn's belly. He exploded into upper and lower halves.

  The shrapnel tore into McBride, eliciting a scream. The monster's mouth finished biting off his arm then chomped his head. Blood and gore drizzled along its shiny new metal chassis. As Dustin died, so did his cavalry; baptismal gifts for a newborn race. Away from the lake and across all the universes marched the children of Voggoth. Seven to go.

  20. Erasers

  Jon Brewer walked the first floor hall with a bundle of file folders tucked under his arm. The sound of his footsteps caused a flat echo that drifted through the nearly empty mansion.

  He intended to head for the second floor office which, according to Ashley, now belonged to him. Of course that made little difference. The skeleton staff at the estate held little in the way of responsibility. What had been the beating heart of humanity’s comeback now resembled something like a morgue.

  Guess that makes me a zombie, he thought.

  Instead of climbing the stairs, he turned to the old dining room. He found his wife in there sitting behind her desk staring at the calendar blotter (bearing an advertisement for North Run Rail "Steam or Diesel, we deliver"). "Boo," but his jest held no humor. She glanced up, sighed, and told him, "My phone hasn't rung all day." He sat in the chair across from her. "Wow, is that so bad? I mean, you were pretty over worked before." Lori looked at Jon. No, he realized, she looked at the chair he sat in.

  "Trevor used to come in and see me, from time to time. He'd sit there and we'd just bull shit. Sometimes serious stuff, sometimes nothing important." "I know." She went on, "With all the changes…well I guess it's starting to hit home. How permanent it is." "Yeah, tell me about it." "Now the work has dried up. At least that was keeping me busy, but now," she motioned to the nearly empty desk top.

  "All this will sort out, Lori. It hasn't been that long. Besides, before it seemed like you had your hand in everything. You had almost no time for Catherine, no time for yourself. Now you're doing important work with more free time."

  His explanation, despite how hard he tried, sounded weak even to his hears.

  "Allright, yep. I’ve changed from the Administrator for the entire nation to the regional director for Adoption and Child Placement. Woo-hoo."

  "Helping kids."

  Her eyes narrowed and her voice grew rough, "I helped kids before, too. I also worked with logistics, and supply, and the military, and Internal Security. A couple of months ago, I could tell you how many bags of flour they had on the Chicago docks or the name of the engineer on the west bound mail express. And yeah, I also placed orphans in new homes, made sure they had schools to go to, and made sure those schools had text books. What now, Jon? What? You know what the problem is?"

  He did not have an answer. She supplied one, "The problem is Trevor. He made sure that each of us knew we had a stake in all this; that we had a responsibility to fight and to work hard to save our people. Hey, look, I like having extra time with my daughter. But I don't like this feeling that I should be doing more. While I sit here bored, somewhere out there is a kid being eaten by a monster or in an alien slave camp because that asshole in the White House decided the rest of the world isn’t worth fighting for. And you can't tell me you don't feel the same way."

  His mouth unhinged. Jon struggled for words.

  "I'm a soldier."

  "You’re a clerk now, Jon. Dante has got you filling out paper work and doing studies and making reports, keeping you here. You're like me, General; we're big paper weights now."

  He stood fast and with a hurt edge in his voice told her, "This damn paper weight has work to do. Maybe it seems quiet to you, but it's not."

  Jon threw down one of the files he carried and said, "That's a security bulletin, Lori. Two members of the Dark Wolves commando unit were arrested at the General Hospital emergency room after breaking in to Trevor's tomb. There's a BOLO out for Nina Forest and a man who fits the description of Gordon Knox."

  Lori stared at the paper in disbelief and read, "Suspects are wanted in connection with the death of Secretary Maple, a homicide that may be part of a larger anti-government conspiracy."

  Jon continued, "Dante called me earlier. He asked me about loyalty, Lori. He's saying that there are those in the government that think someone is going to try a coup real soon."

  "Nina Forest? I mean, Gordon Knox, sure, but not Nina Forest."

  "Maybe she started to get some memories back, I don't know," Jon ran a hand across his cheek as if checking for razor stubble. "Point is, things are really tense out there. I've got to calm things down. I have to go make some phone calls."

  Lori spoke with poison-laced sarcasm, "Right. Make some calls. Tell you what, I'll put a pot of coffee on, too. Why, we're really going to change the world today, aren't we?"

  – At one o'clock in the afternoon on Saturday, July 5, Eagle One landed along the banks of Spruce Knob Lake. Thick forests, colorful wildflowers, and the mountain peaks that represented the highest point in West Virginia surrounded the remote landing area.

  Pilot Rick Hauser had not chosen that location for its vista but, rather, for the clean lake water. With Gordon's help he managed to fill the transport's hydrogen tanks. Nina waited inside, gazing at the weapon collection. She even dared to run a hand of admiration over the shiny blade of Stonewall McAllister's sword.

  In any case, the Eagle took to the skies again and managed to make it most of the way across Kentucky before being challenged by a monitoring station at the old Warren County Airport in Bowling Green. Before intercept jets could make it on-scene, Hauser found a suitable hiding spot inside the Mammoth Cave National Park. While hiding from air patrols, they dined on a late supper of emergency rations.

  After night fell, Eagle One went airborne once more, hugging the ground and relying on Knox's recollection of radar zones to weave their way across Tennessee into Mississippi.

  However, with Hauser the only Eagle-trained pilot, they had to stop for a few hours of rest before he fell asleep at the sticks. He chose a landing spot alongside the Tennessee River. While Hauser slept, Gordon and Nina replenished the ship's tanks.

  As they continued their journey, Knox's knowledge of radar stations combined with the computer maps onboard helped them avoid air defense systems. They stopped to refuel water at the Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Texas/Louisiana border then pushed on through the day into the night to the Rio Grande.

  At that point, Eagle One could go no farther. An extensive net of radar installations and surveillance Eagles kept a close watch on the Mexican border. There would be no flying over it.

  The Eagle carried a pair of personal hover crafts based on reverse-engineered Mutant bikes resembling a cross between a jet ski and a snowmobile.

  While Hauser and Odin the Elkhound remained behind to guard the ship, Nina and Gordon crossed the border at high speed heading south toward Monterrey.

  – They rode all night, moving much too fast to be distracted by shadows in old towns, specks of fire on the horizon, or wild beasts.

  According to surveys conducted before Gordon "retired" from his post as Director of Intelligence, most of northern Mexico remained a dangerous wasteland prowled by predators as well as human bandits in coastal areas.

  The two followed the main roads heading south, using the powerful front headlights of the hover bikes to illuminate the path in fifty yard stretches. On more than one occasion they felt the presence of airborne predators overhead, but even those hunters could not keep pace with the determined riders.

  Three hours before dawn, the two found shelter among the remains of an abandoned Mexican army convoy covered in a decade of dust, including an intact armored vehicle. More specifically, a World War II vintage half-track painted in modern camouflage patterns. Nina could not believe Gordon when he told her that such an old vehicle had, in fact, been a part of the Mexican armed forces at the time of the invasion.

  Regardless, they spent a few hours catching some sleep within the relative security of the abandoned vehicle. As the first flickers of dawn's approach glowed orange on the horizon, a sound stirred the travelers awake; a low rumble of a sound.

  They exited the temporary shelter and scanned the fields of broken buildings, brush, and foothills around the deserted convoy. After a moment, they realized the rumble came from the south; it came from Monterrey.

  Nina and Gordon mounted their rides and hurried off in that direction surrounded by the shadows of morning twilight. The whiz and whir of the speeding hovercraft could not block out the growing roar of the noise, but it was not until they climbed the brush-covered hills northeast of the ruins of Monterrey that they could trace the source of the sound.

  Nina dropped to her belly and wiggled forward amidst the dusty ground and dried sage at the crest of the mountain. Her black tank top and green BDUs quickly grew covered in powdered dirt. Gordon knelt low beside her with a pair of binoculars in his hand. The sun-while still very new that day-grew hot fast, drying the air.

  Towering above the city to the south were the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains. That range trailed off into the distance in a line of dramatic ridges and steeply banked slopes of brown and fading green. The sound that had roused them from their slumber reverberated everywhere, like a million heads of cattle stampeding.

  Between their position and those mountains lay several square miles of what had once been Monterrey. The rising sun shed light on the devil's work.

  "What the Hell is this?" Nina's brow furled tight but her mouth fell wide open.

  She expected to see the singed and melted remains of the city and the Centurian base. Indeed, the smoldering smoke rising from the flattened ruins there did not surprise her, she had witnessed the handiwork of dreadnought belly boppers before.

  However, it did surprise them to find that half of those ruins were gone, combed neat and flat into graded dirt. Indeed, the view from the hill resembled a before and after advertisement for a vacuum cleaner: the western side of the city cleansed of debris with only sand-like dirt remaining. The east still a tangled mess of flattened concrete, melted metal, and scorched land with the tallest piles of debris rising no more than six feet.

  "Good God," Gordon mumbled in a choppy voice. "It's…it's being erased."

  The droning sound came from a swirling cloud hovering and moving southward nearly a mile away from Nina and Gordon's observation point. At the rear of that cloud shot streams of freshly-cleaned dirt, for some reason reminding Nina of the combine harvesters on the farms in her home town in Pennsylvania.

  Something worked within that cloud, but it hid inside one of the last remaining shadows at the base of the mountain peaks. Nonetheless, the path the thing followed was easy to see, in its wake it left flat, featureless soil.

  "They're cleaning it all up," Knox managed a better handle on his words. "Whatever evidence is down there… we have to hurry."

  Nina and Gordon retrieved their hover bikes and swooped down the hill. At the base of that hill stretched a field of debris so flat that the two could see-unhindered-all the way across the remains of town to where that large dust cloud moved at the base of the mountains.

  They stopped at a series of stone blocks piled one atop each other to the height of five feet. They stopped because that great cloud on the far side of the old city began to pivot as it reached the end of another line of cleansing. As it turned to head north-to head toward Nina and Gordon-the veil of dust blew off, revealing the machine.

  It stretched a half a mile long from side to side and rose some fifty feet into the air. It took Nina's eyes several seconds to understand what she saw. At first, her mind likened the sight to the head of a gigantic push broom, but with squirming bristles. As the dust dissipated, she thought it more a long, hovering wing with thousands of tubes hanging down to the ground, each scrubbing the earth below while a great suction of wind scooped up burnt buildings, melted cars, broken planks, and shattered steel.

  It moved slow and methodic tearing away the old, sifting through the mess, and leaving behind a trail of soil cleaned of any evidence the ruins of Monterrey might hold.

  "Listen, we have to get in there and find something."

  Gordon said, "If I'm right, you're going to need a Centurian body. I'm thinking a head alone would do the trick."

  A flash from somewhere between them and the machine caught both their eyes. A stream of liquid light tore between the two people and slammed into the stone pillars. Those pillars evaporated into grains of sand. The explosion knocked both Nina and Gordon from their mounts.

  "It's armed!"

  Nina corrected, "No. There's something else out there."

  She dared a peek from a prone position. Far away the great machine did its work, ripping evidence from the ground a half-mile at a time. But closer…about five hundred yards away…Nina spotted three dark figures, each standing nearly eight feet tall and spread in a picket line with fifty yards between one another.

  She raised binoculars for a better view.

  The machine's guardians wore dark cloaks, hiding any features. They walked in determined but slow steps, traversing the ground ahead of the cleansing unit. As she watched, one of the two robed arms raised. She saw something that resembled the exhaust end of a jet engine. A golden ball glowed from its end "Get down!"

  Another blast of energy streaked toward the infiltrators. It missed high and slammed into the hillside behind them where it knocked great clumps of rock and dirt off a ridge.

  "Damn it," Knox groaned. "We can't get anything with these things around!"

  Nina's head snapped around and she glared at him through slits-for-eyes. In that instant he clearly saw that she would not retreat after having come so far.

  "I'll take care of this."

  Before he could protest, Nina jumped into the saddle of her hover bike. While one hand worked the throttle, her other hand slipped the sword from her leg.

  Meanwhile, Gordon pulled a Dessert Eagle. 44 from a thigh rig and gripped it tight.

  Nina kept working the throttle as she swept to the east flying over the remains of the city. One of the things defending the machine raised its arm, took aim, and fired, but its weapon moved too slow and too clumsy to hit the speeding craft.

  Like a dive bomber aiming for a target, she turned the hover bike hard and accelerated at the robed creatures. As she did, she spied another glob of gold…she waited…waited…and jogged to her left as the watery fire streamed by.