Chapter Sixty-Four - Tougher Means More Boom

Chapter Sixty-Four - Tougher Means More Boom

Chapter Sixty-Four - Tougher Means More Boom

The international standard shipping container is 12.2 meters long, and 2.43 meters wide. Thats enough room to carry over a hundred people with relative comfort, assuming that they dont need too much breathing room.

In a situation where that number isnt sufficient, you can begin to stack people one atop the other. With less room between each, you can push that number up to two hundred civilians per container.

More than that, and you will need to add air circulation systems to the containers or risk having the people within suffer from oxygen deprivation and carbon monoxide poisoning before arriving at their final destination.

This math, of human lives and resources, is the math of tyrants, despots, and the desperate.

--Excerpt from A Survivors Tale 2024

***

The first trucks were packed so full that the people within would probably be bumping shoulders the entire time they moved. Those had left some minutes ago.RêAd lateSt chapters at novelhall.com Only

The trucks being stuffed full of people now had so many being pushed into them that it was a miracle no one had been trampled yet. And still I wanted them to pack in more. Faster Monroe! I called out.

As we took over more trucks, it cleared some of the road up. Sure, there were some that we just couldnt use on account of them being driverless vehicles, and the rather ordinary old cars dotting the road were left unused as well. That just meant that there were large gaps with no one in them, or no one except for a whole lot of antithesis.

The first wave to come around the far end of the street looked like crap. They had wounds already and looked like theyd been rolled around in dirt before reaching us.

The sight of them had set the crowd to screaming and panicking, and it was all Monroe and his boys could do to stop them from turning into little more than an unruly mob.

That had been five minutes back. The first wave was wiped with a few hisses from Whisper and one gout of flames from Gomorrah. The crowd had resettled, another two trucks were filled and drove off.

Then Monroe announced that the first three had arrived at the hospital, our relay point. They were met there by an entire platoon of soldiers with tanks and enough weaponry to stop a small incursion in its tracks.

That was the first wave, back when the trucks only had a hundred or so people in them. Now we were trying to cram in five hundred people into three trucks, one of which was a half-trailer, and things werent fitting in right.

I was leaning over the top of a car, Whispers little tripod legs digging into its roof to keep it stable. Id long given up just using concussion-tipped bolts and had switched to garrot grenades that at least turned a small section of the street into a blender after impact. It was doing a number on the ever growing waves of aliens coming at us.

Gomorrah was doing her bit too, spraying entire sections of the road with liquid fire that washed up walls and over cars and turned any passing aliens into so much burning meat.

The air stank of melting plastic and rubber and plants.

The land-bound bastards were a problem, but a relatively small one. We had to empty trucks to make room, which gave us plenty of materials to build a barricade with. The problem was the fliers.

Gomorrah nodded. Ill stay as well, she said.

I felt myself grinning. Cant miss out on this many points? I asked.

Not on your life, Stray Cat, she said. We can run back to that hospital of yours while making it cost the aliens for every step.

I like it, I said.

I was running on a whole lot of adrenaline and maybe a bit of panic, but there was also a sort of gleeful joy in seeing so many aliens being torn apart, in knowing that what I was doing right then and there was saving people in a very real sense.

It was like donating a dollar to charity, but better.

I was about to fire another quip out at Gomorrah when I noticed that she was staring out past our barricade. What in the name of the Father is that? she muttered.

I looked out ahead and felt my joy pop like an overfull balloon.

There was an alien coming around the corner, a model I hadnt seen yet. That wasnt terribly unlikely. So far we had been dealing with the same sort of bastards, Model Threes and Ones and Sixes, with the occasional Model Four showing up in all of their tentacular glory.

This thing was different.

It was four legged, and built like a bear if bears were in the habit of trampling cars. Its body was the same black-green as most Antithesis, but this thing was covered in a layer of fine pale-green quills that looked almost wet to the touch.

Thats a Model Five. Its a model dedicated to biological warfare. Its quills are dangerous, even to a Samurai. Do not let it approach you. If you see Model Ones around it, be very careful.

I raised Whisper, aimed at the middle of the monster, and fired.

Something so big shouldnt have been able to move so damned quickly. One moment it was turning around the corner, the next it was rushing at us at an angle that had my first shot missing it entirely.

Fuck, I said.

Language, Gomorrah muttered.

The Model Fives mouth opened, revealing what could only be the organic version of a firehose for a tongue. Faint pinkish gas started to waft out of it. The wind was at our backs, for now, but I didnt want to find out what would happen if and when that reached us.

Thats about when it stepped into the thirty-meter range of Gomorrahs flamethrowers and she lit it up.

Just to be damned sure, I fired off a trio of garrot grenade-tipped bolts into the monster's chest and watched as they tore it apart in a spray of flaming meaty giblets.

It might be tougher than average, Gomorrah said. But were still two Samurai.