“Where is sector twelve?“ said Zach.

  Before she could answer, Hannigan started typing away at his keyboard.

  “That’s not the only drone that’s seeing movement.” He shrunk down the existing feed so there were six feeds once again. Each one had a red frame flashing around it. “We’re picking up movement from all the drones. They are all about two—”

  Before he could finish one of the drone feeds fizzled and went black.

  “What just happened?” said Zach standing close to the man at the keyboard.

  “I… I don’t know, we just lost the connection.”

  “And another!” said Trow looking at the large screen, as the second feed went to black.

  “Bring the drones back! Or we will lose them all!” said Zach.

  Hannigan looked at the soldiers sitting at a station in front of him. “You heard the Brigadier General, return the drones.” Even before he finished talking another two feeds went black.

  The soldiers in front of them frantically spoke into their earpieces but stopped when the final two feeds went dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Fiona sat in her pickup looking at a hundred or so angry faces. “Break up gatherings of more than a few people. Right…”

  The stout man next to her with a healthy beard, looked at her. “What do you want us to do ma’am?”

  Fiona and her second in command of the Justice Force were parked in a side street to a large open square in the downtown area.

  The shadows were growing long as the march for ‘Freedom’ gathered in the center of the flat concrete area.

  “Give them one warning to go home, and then we use harsher methods.”

  “Like what?” said the former marshal.

  “Like whatever you need to do to get them to get the fuck out of the area. We got an invasion force bearing down on this camp, we don’t have time to be dealing—” she stopped when she realized her words were coming out way too strongly. “I’m sorry Mike. Just do what you think is enough force to convince them to leave.”

  “Okay,” said Mike Lardner getting out of the pickup. Once outside he told the officers around him to move in, from his radio.

  Fiona watched the men of the medium gray uniforms walk forward with body armor and guns over their shoulders, and the angry faces grow angrier.

  Placards with “Justice for the five” and “We won’t be ruled by a dictator” bounced up and down behind masked individuals.

  Mike walked forward to the closest protestor and engaged him in conversation. They seemed to be talking. That’s something. The last thing the camp needed was an insurgency, although that was exactly what the gang was trying to create.

  Her radio crackled and came to life with Zach’s voice. “How’s it looking down there? I’m watching it on the news. Over.”

  “Mike’s talking to some of the leaders. They seem to be willing to listen. Over.”

  Chants of “Down with the military!” Got louder.

  “That’s good, we can’t let this get out—”

  A gunshot rang out around the square and everyone started running.

  “What’s happening? There’s a gunshot?” Continued Zach.

  “I’ll get back to you. Over.”

  Fiona quickly pushed her helmet on and jumped out of the pickup, with her rifle in her hand. As she ran forward she realized one of the officers was lying on the floor with blood pouring from a head wound. All the officers were ducked down behind cars, looking up at the buildings that loomed over the square.

  The crack of another gunshot mixed with screams as people scattered like ants in all directions, some pushing into her as they ran to get away from the kill zone.

  She flung herself down next to Mike, who was behind a wall.

  “We got a sniper up there somewhere, could be anywhere,” said Mike. “How did Krycek look? I just saw him go down?”

  “He’s dead,” said Fiona.

  Mike shook his head. “He was a good kid.”

  “How good an aim are you?”

  “Pretty decent why?”

  “Because you’re about to have four seconds to find the shooter after he misses me with his first shot.”

  “What?”

  Fiona jumped up and ran forward around the wall, a bullet whistled past her head making her duck, but she kept running, zigzagging best she could. Come on. She knew the second shot probably wouldn’t miss. Ahead of her in the center of the square was a tree, it was going to be the only chance she had of avoiding the next bullet.

  Two shots rang out. She dived under the tree and immediately looked for bullet wounds.

  “I think I got him!” shouted Mike. “He’s in the east block, on the fifth floor.” He repeated the details on his radio and officers ran into the building. Fiona sat, steadying her breathing.

  A few moments later, an officer’s face appeared in the gap of the shattered glass window five floors above, and shouted down, “he’s dead”. Fiona slowly got to her feet and walked over to Mike as he walked towards her.

  “You must have a death wish or something,” said Mike.

  “I want to know everything about who that person was, before daybreak,” she said walking back to the pickup.

  Mike watched her leave. “Yes, ma’am.”

  As she got back into her vehicle, she clicked on her radio. “Fiona to Core operations. The protest is broken up.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Zach stood on the north wall looking out to the faint greens and browns that made up the fields and occasional clump of trees. The sun was going down and the color was slowly being washed from the landscape, being replaced with shades of blue and gray.

  Since seeing the gang’s convoy moving towards the camp from the grainy drone footage, he wanted to inspect as much of the wall himself as he could before they arrived.

  “We got good visibility in most directions for miles due to there hardly being any tall hills around here,” said Bass.

  “How’s the leg holding up? I apologize for dragging you out on this little ride with me, but I thought you would appreciate getting out from the Core for a while.”

  “You weren’t wrong about that, I do appreciate it,” he then turned to face Zach. “I just want to say thank you for giving me this chance. On the way back from Atlanta, all I could think was that I’m going to lose my leg and I won’t be of any use to anyone anymore,” he stepped back with one hand on his walking stick and smiled. “But here I am with two legs still in my combat fatigues, being useful.”

  Zach smiled. “I would have enlisted your help even if you only had one leg,” he then looked back out into the building gloom towards the north with a high-powered scope. “Still nothing. They’re out there I’m sure of it. We should increase the patrols on the walls.”

  “Already sent the order out this morning.”

  Zach glanced at the sergeant and smiled, he then turned and looked back into the camp. Just a mile away the large metal plated roofs and chimneys of the camps industrial area stood out as the setting sun gave them all tinges of pink. Amongst the football field sized buildings new structures were taking shape. “Those new walls and emplacements can’t be up soon enough, at least they completed the bunkers some time ago.”

  “We’re diverting as much as we can from residential building sites around the camp. We got the materials and manpower isn’t a problem, it’s just if we run out of time or not before they arrive.”

  As they were both looking south, two dots grew in the sky in front of them and quickly became recognizable as Apache helicopters. The repeating sound of their rotors grew louder until the two aircraft roared overhead heading out to patrol behind the walls.

  They both watched them disappear into the coming night.

  *****

  “Joining us tonight is Brigadier General Zachariah Felton, the new head of the military of camp Bravo. Thank you for coming tonight.”

  Zach sat under the harsh lights on a stone colored sofa. Facing him from across a desk was a shiny looking woman that looked like she wanted to sell him a house.

  “Brigadier General Felton if I could start with, what made you want to come on my show tonight and talk to the citizens of the camp?”

  “Well, first let me say thank you for inviting me Eleanor. I was something of a fan of yours before the Cascade, many years ago, and I’m glad you were able to make it out of the Portland camp and could find a place here.”

  The golden haired woman blinked without responding.

  “But to get to your point. There have been a lot of changes recently that have impacted on a lot of peoples lives, and I felt it important that I come here tonight to try and put people’s mind at ease.”

  “You’re referring to the horrible incident at Coral?“

  “That, the recent aerial attack and the E.L.F attack which did so much damage on our infrastructure.”

  “But about the attack at Coral. Five of our most distinguished citizens, men and women that went bravely to meet with a delegation from the group calling themselves the ‘Hell Fire’ gang, were killed even though the military was meant to be protecting them, is that correct?”

  “I wasn’t in charge of that mission. In fact—”

  “But you where there correct?”

  “Yes, I was there, but—”

  “And you were the most senior military officer at the location, correct?”

  “Yes, but that’s what I’m trying to say, we, the military were there to try and protect the councilors—”

  Eleanor Hart looked at the camera. “Well obviously you failed in your duty!”

  Standing in the wings about twenty feet from the sofa and desk, Jennifer Grove cringed and shook her head. After Amanda Holland died she had felt at a loss as to what purpose she would serve in the camp. Then the host of ‘Bravo Today’ got in contact with her asking if she could get the new head of the military on the show, as their attempts to contact him had been blown off. She managed to get a meeting with the new Brigadier General and a few hours later here they were. She just hoped Zach wouldn’t fire her from her new position as head of media relations as soon as the interview finished.

  “Amanda Holland fired the one person who was keeping this camp going, General Elizabeth Trow.” Zach’s words had force behind them making the small studio audience grow quiet. “The General has been reinstated and is now helping me keep everyone safe. Because that’s what we all want right?”

  Jennifer watched and nodded. Good, but don’t push it too far Zach.

  “Of course that’s what we want Brigadier General, but there’s—”

  The studio lights faded to black, then came back up.

  Eleanor looked at her producer. “Are we still on?” He gave her the thumbs up.

  Zach instinctively reached into his side pocket and pulled his radio out, placing it on the sofa next to him.

  “As I was saying Brigadier General, the people of this camp don’t just want to be kept safe, they expect to be able to choose who runs the camp!”

  “And that is something we can address in the future, but unfortunately—”

  The distant sounds of booms rang around the high ceiling of the studio space, and Zach’s radio came to life with voices. He immediately pulled his microphone off his top and got up. “We’ll have to finish this some other time.”

  Eleanor looked concerned. “Err, yes of course Brigadier General, that was…”

  Zach walked away while clicking on his radio and collecting Jennifer. They walked into the stairwell of the newly constructed building. “What’s going on? Over,” he said into his radio.

  “Brigadier General, please return to the Core as soon as you can, there—” the young woman voice was replaced with General Trows.

  “We got E.L.F’s coming at us from all sides Zach, including flying ones. Over.”

  “Aren’t the Cascaders stationed at the walls, pushing them back? Over.”

  “They’re telling me they are trying but something’s wrong, the creatures aren’t responding. Over.”

  Zach and Jennifer came out of the building into a side alley where a Humvee was waiting. The nearby gun emplacement ten stories above them boomed out making the ground shake around them.

  He turned to her. “I’m going back to the Core. You should get home. Thanks for setting this up, just bad timing.”

  She nodded and started walking the short journey back to her apartment.

  Zach jumped into the Humvee. “Back to the Core private, as quickly as you can.”

  As the Humvee skidded around corners trying to escape the downtown area, Zach looked up at searchlights following shadows around the night sky.

  Streams of neon metal from rail guns focused in on one of the dark forms knocking it out of the sky, but others descended on a gun tower. Pieces of metal and masonry fell to the ground crushing some vehicles, while people watched from lit apartment windows close by.

  Zach clicked on his radio again. “They seem to be attacking the gun emplacements. Over.”

  “We’re seeing the same here on the video feeds. Over.”

  “Did they do that before? Over.”

  “No.”

  Zach lowered his radio, placing his hand to the side to balance himself as the car leaped onto the main highway back to the Core. He knew this was the gang’s doing. “Find me Dr. Joshi, I want a way to combat the influence the gang are having on the E.L.F’s.”

  Trow acknowledged.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Zach looked at the large screen in the main operations hall. A plan view image showing multiple red dots jostling and moving towards black lines which represented the camp walls, was displayed.

  “That’s a lot of red dots,” said Bass standing nearby with Elijah.

  “We’ve dealt with that many before, we can again,” said Zach.

  One of the side doors opened and Raj appeared with another older man in glasses.

  “What you got for me Raj?” said Zach as the doctor approached him.

  “Okay, well as we suspected the E.L.F’s are being controlled or a better way to explain it is, imprinted with targets, which our Cascaders are having a hard time affecting.”

  “I thought we had a lot more Cascaders than the gang has?” said Bass.

  “Well we don’t know how many they have, but that’s not the problem. Once a Cascader links to an E.L.F the creature will then pretty much do whatever the Cascader wants it to do. Other Cascaders can influence the creature sure, but not to a greater degree than the original contactee,” he pointed to the screen. “Our Cascaders are keeping some of the creatures back, but most are simply ignoring them and attacking anyway, and worse than that they are attacking specific targets.”

  Bass sighed and sat on the desk near him. “Just when we thought we got a handle on all of this.”

  “And they are just gonna keep on coming. The reason we haven’t seen the gang knocking on our walls is they were probably out there scooping up as many E.L.F’s as they could find and like an asteroid, aiming them at this camp. Hell they don’t have to fire a single bullet they just gotta keep doing what they’re doing,” said Elijah.

  Zach sighed with his arms folded. “Then there’s only one thing we can do. Find their Cascaders and kill them.”

  A few seconds of hush past between them.

  “I don’t think your woman is going to be happy about that,” said Elijah.

  “That’s not your concern,” Zach then looked at the young officer at the console in front of him. “Find me Captain Bower, I want to talk to him.”

  *****

  Zach pushed his chair back and put his feet up on the former General’s desk. He wasn’t sure what part of the night it was. In these rooms that were once a popular cave tourist attraction it was easy to lose track of time. He leaned back and looked at an old clock on the wall. 10 pm the sharp black tin hands said, but he thought it said that an hour ago when he last looked.

  The last few hours the rail guns had been running nearly continuously, shooting down an endless supply of E.L.F’s that made it over the walls. Most of the land based creatures were kept back by a combination of the guns at the walls and a multitude of Cascaders pushing themselves to their limits to hold back the mounting tide that was out there.

  Luckily the dam repairs had been completed a few days before, but even with the increased power they had, enough E.L.F’s were getting through to destroy or damage some of their crucial defenses. It was death by a thousand cuts.

  He looked down at sheets of paper on his desk. They contained plans and backup plans that he and the war council had come up with. Some of which he knew he was going to have to implement in the coming days and others he hoped he never would.

  A knock came at his office door and Ava appeared in the gap. “I’m off home now, would you like anything before I leave?”

  “No, I’m good Ava, thank you. Have a good night. Stay safe.”

  She produced a faltering smile and closed the door.

  His eyes felt heavy. Leaning back into the chair, the world around him started to fall away, but was replaced with the sound of rain, screams and tank shells exploding.

  “Uh what?” he opened his eyes.

  A third knock reverberated through the door.

  “Come in.”

  General Trow appeared. “Oh, you’re sleeping I’ll come back.”

  Zach took his feet off the desk. “No, no. Come in, just resting my eyes.”

  She walked in and pulled up a nearby chair, but instead of sitting in it, she moved around to where he was sitting and opened the bottom drawer. She then pulled out a bottle of Whiskey.

  “I guess you haven’t looked in these drawers yet then,” she said holding the bottle up.

  Zach laughed. “No. I did wonder what was in them. I’ll take a shot.”

  She walked to where the water jug was and poured the golden liquor into two cups, handing one to Zach who immediately sipped from it.

  “Good quality,” he took another small sip.