CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO
10 NOV 2011, 20:42 MST
“No... How can this be happening?” General Shepard stared at the map showing the locations of demonic incursions. As they watched, another site popped up in Argentina near Buenos Aires. “How are they doing this?”
“I don’t know. But the locations look familiar. Damn it, I need our analysts, but we’ve been scattered. Do you have anyone with a map of the known locations of thanovores?” asked Agent Brown.
“Colonel Morrow should.”
“Get him here,” barked the General. Several soldiers rushed to comply.
“The Colonel has a mind control spell on him, buried deep. I haven’t been able to figure out whose it is. We could be inviting an enemy agent into our midst,” cautioned Agent Brown.
“Can you remove it?”
“Yes, but it might do some damage.”
“We don’t have time for niceties. Do it when he gets here, with him under armed guard until then.”
Brown nodded. “I can handle him. But until he gets here... I do have another possibility.” He fiddled with his phone. “Mackie! Can you spare a few minutes?”
“Okay, sounds like you have things under control up there. We’re up to our asses in alligators, new portals are popping up all over. What? No, I haven’t told Faulkner yet, we just realized. There’s a pattern to it, and it looks like it matches... do you have any hard data on thanovore locations? Yes, ghouls, whatever. Speculative is fine, it’s better than me just relying on memory. Thanks.”
Brown stared at his phone until an image appeared. He held it up toward the big map, and cursed. “This is going to get worse.”
“Worse? How in God’s name can it possibly get worse?”
Brown showed his map to the General. Thousands of locations were marked, and all the marks on the big map correlated to ones on his phone. “Oh bloody hell. Can we get eyes on any of these? Ground level reports?”
“I can’t retask the sats from here unless we cut the lines to Peterson,” reported one of the techs.
“Get them to do it, then,” barked the General. “Hopefully my rank is still worth something.”
“Working on it.”
Another soldier called out, “Got a news broadcast out of Buenos Aires.”
“Put it up.”
The map was replaced by a shaky camera view of distant flying creatures and staccato panicky reporting in Spanish. A cluster of the flyers broke and headed toward the camera, quickly resolving into flying monkey-like creatures. The cameraman stumbled and fell, but kept the camera pointed in the right direction. The voice of the reporter gurgled to a stop. A moment later, the signal cut out.
The General was first to speak. “Are we seriously being invaded by flying monkeys?”
“That is what Faulkner reported.”
“Did he have any tips on how to fight them?”
*** *** ***
PORTAL OVERWATCH
DETROIT, MI
10 NOV 2011, 22:44 EST
Donna and Gwen were orbiting the portal, watching for stragglers. They’d tried a variety of attacks against the flying monkeys, and found that cobalt-tipped flechettes were both effective and efficient. Carrying cobalt with them also shielded them from the worst of the death aura, to the point that they could easily shield out the residual effect. That neither were truly alive most senses also helped.
A few demons that looked more like armored hippopotami had lumbered through the portal, but the flechettes made fast work of those as well, and the incursion appeared to have been abandoned.
They were studying the portal from a modest distance and debating potential methods for closing or sealing it when Agent Brown called.
“Hiya, Brownie,” chirped Donna. “We’ve got the incursion here mostly licked. Cobalt tipped ammunition takes these guys down easily, so if there are a few that slipped past us...”
“There are more portals,” said Brown. “A lot more.”
“How many?” asked Duncan. “We could split up...”
“So far we’ve seen twenty, but they’re popping up at an increasing rate. We just lost Buenos Aires, I’m watching satellite footage right now and there are corpses everywhere. You won’t be able to do anything about the ones in the Middle East, and there’s only so much full Moon.”
Duncan bit back a curse. “Okay. You need to arm everyone you can with cobalt tipped ammunition. Carrying cobalt against your skin will protect from the worst of the death effect. Get that out, and maybe we can contain this.”
“We can’t just magic up cobalt ammunition. Sure, there are plenty of amateur armorers here in the States that could whip something up. We don’t have to face that many portals, we can probably manage. Elsewhere? Forget about it. We need something global.”
“Wait, why don’t you have to face many portals?” asked Duncan.
“Still running down the details on it, but every portal location lines up well with known thanovores. Lucky you killed all of yours, Canada should be fine.”
“We didn’t kill all of them. Three got saved instead, healed by Lunar magic. Oh hell, if they’re a threat, we have to get Bunhill and Henry out of Ottawa!”
“On it,” said Gwen. “I’ll contact them, get them moving.”
“Look,” Duncan continued. “You need to get the word out. Not just to your people, but to anyone else who you can reach. Maybe this can be contained.”
“We’ll do what we can.”
Duncan dropped the call to Agent Brown. “Anything?”
“They’re fine, and heading northwest as fast as they can just in case. So if they do go, the portal will be remote.”
Duncan glared at the portal below them. “I feel like we should be doing something to take the battle to them.” They moved to a position where they could see through the portal. There was no activity to be seen, all the demons had cleared well away from it. “Damn it, no targets.”
“Let’s go meet up with Bunhill. Maybe they figured something out.”
*** *** ***
CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO
10 NOV 2011, 20:48 MST
“God damn it!” cursed the General. “We need to get on the EAS now and warn people! Why are you stalling me?”
“An EAS broadcast like this should come from the top of the chain of command,” replied the Stratcom commander.
“And that would be? The president died when Air Force One went down.”
“We’re still trying to locate the Vice President.”
“He’s dead too. We have confirmation from a field agent.”
“And the speaker and Senate president died at the gala, along with many of the others. We’ve got a team heading out to pick up the Secretary of State from his home in Martha’s Vineyard. I’ll tell them.”
“Good. We need to get this out.”
“Send us the information and we’ll work on verifying it.”
“Verifying it?” The General started to curse, then realized he was speaking into a dead line. “Bastard cut me off. What is wrong with him?”
“He has been suborned by our enemies,” replied Agent Brown softly.
“You’re kidding, right? I thought you guys were on top of this mind control thing.”
Brown shook his head. “Not as much as we’d like. It’s a horrific mess.”
“Are you completely certain Stratcom is compromised?”
“High probability. I have an asset in position, but if he acts, it will likely be his last act.”
“Sir, we’ve got more portals!”
Both men turned to the big screen, where many more red flecks had appeared on the map, and more were appearing by the second. “Oh don’t tell me. Zoom in on the East Coast.”
“Looks like one in Martha’s Vineyard.”
Agent Brown shook his head. “That was the one we never could find. We knew he’d gone to ground somewhere out there, but he was too clever for us, stayed off the grid.”
“Well, now the demons have taken care of that problem, and given us a bigger one. The chain of succession is broken.”
The General called Stratcom back, and they confirmed the loss of the extraction team. “Now is it enough of a God-damned emergency? We need to get this information out now.”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because it’s not your call to make.” The line dropped, again.
“Sir! Another portal. Atlanta.”
“Damn it. On the plus side, that should be the last of them,” said Brown. “God, look at them go. We need to contain this.”
“How? We don’t have command.”
“I can arrange for Stratcom to go offline.”
Brown watched as the General worked through the implications. “At what cost?” he asked.
“A good friend.”
The General nodded. “Do it.”
Brown pulled out his phone again, opened a different circuit. “Paul. Order Obsidian. And... I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” replied a whispered voice. “The fireworks will be epic.”
*** *** ***
CBS BROADCAST
10 NOV 2011, 22:50 EST
“We still have no word on what happened in Washington, DC, but communications are slowly being restored and it appears that the damage has been oddly limited.”
A fuzzy shot of the DC skyline is replaced by street-level footage. “What’s this? Atlanta?”
Winged shapes swarm out of a glowing tear in the sky, and race toward the people in the scene. They fall like scythed wheat before the creatures even reach them. Some stop to feast, most rush outward. The camera is soon overwhelmed, and falls.
“Do we have anything from our affiliate there? Okay, cut to that.”
A different announcer, looking harried, is staring into the camera. “We have no idea what’s going on, but reports of widespread deaths are coming in from everywhere. The police would likely urge you to stay calm, but we haven’t heard anything from them, and they’re not answer...”
There is a loud crash, and something dark and misshapen flits past the camera. The announcer falls away from his desk, then the feed goes black.
“Oh God. What was that? I’m sorry, I’ve never seen anything like...”
More footage, random shots from what look like security cameras. People dying, bodies strewn in the street. Monstrous shapes stalking, flitting, cavorting.
“Shut it off.”
The view returns to the anchor. “God. I don’t know what to say. It looks like the end of days out there.” He bowed his head. “I have not said these words since I was a child. But now...
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name...”
The broadcast cuts out, replaced by the shrill tone of the Emergency Alert System.
“This is not a test. I repeat, this is not a test. We are under attack by what are, for all intents and purposes, demonic forces. They can kill unprotected humans from a distance of dozens of yards at a minimum. Cobalt, held against the skin, provides some protection.
“These creatures cannot be killed by conventional bullets. However they are vulnerable to cobalt. We ask any person capable of arming themselves and their neighbors with cobalt tipped bullets to do so immediately.”