Kenopsia (Book 1 of Pandora's Wake: The Nomad Chronicles)
The Road of the Dead

The huge armoured MRAP lead the caravan as it made its way along the abandoned roadway through the chill night. Joanas and Kurt both rode inside, protected from the crisp, chill air which was made all the colder by the wind as the vehicles took off up the road at a moderately high speed. Joanas was ready to man the large 50 calibre weapon mounted on the vehicle’s roof if the need arose, but everyone hoped it wouldn’t.

Since they left the camp site Knut had begun to sound worse and worse over the radio, and the two soldiers couldn’t tell how the other nomads were. Many of the vehicles in the caravan were lacking any form of communications with the others. Joanas had hoped that once in Bex he may replace more radio’s for trade with what survivors there still were in the town, but for the time being he was concentrating on just reaching the hospital before anyone got any worse. His own eyes were itching, and he could feel his lungs burning.

From the driver’s seat, Kurt was wheezing as well, punctuating that with occasional, and – Joanas thought – rather alarming coughing fits.

Joanas’s thoughts snapped back to the here and now as the headlights illuminated something up ahead – something large and metallic.

“Oberfeldwebel!” Kurt called to his superior, “Do you see that?”

“Ja” Joanas leant forward between the front seats to get a better look, “I do not like the look of this. Radio Knut and tell him what we have seen, also, slow us down a little, Ja?” he ordered before opening the roof hatch and climbing up to take his position behind the big 50 calibre machine gun. His headset radio was tuned to the same frequency as the main set, letting him listen in on the conversation between his corporal and the caravan leader, Knut.

He trained the 50 calibre on the smoking wreckage ahead of them as Knut gave orders to advance the column no closer than 25 metres from the object, then deploy the first 4 vehicles in line with their headlights flooding the area. When the other vehicles stopped behind them he would order them to turn their lights outwards to watch for any surprises from the side of the road. Knut would want cover from the 50 calibre whilst he sent a reconnaissance forward, Joanas knew. Once the other coms traffic had stopped the stern German called into his headset mic,

“Kurt, when we stop, switch places. You provide cover from the 50, I will lead Knut’s reconnaissance. Leave the engine running in case we need to make a quick withdrawal.”

“Jawhol Oberfeldwebel Ulrich!” Kurt barked back, an undercurrent of nervousness in his voice. By now he could see the wreckage quite clearly and it wasn’t one vehicle but three.

The lead vehicle was tracked and armoured, at a glance it could have been mistaken for a tank, with a turret mounted autocannon, but Joanas doubted it was. Even in the dark, with the smoke and the wreckage being partially mangled he was certain it was a Stridsfordon 90, an infantry fighting vehicle used by the Norwegians and Swedes. The side was mangled, as far as he could tell from here, and the turret sat at a slight angle on its mount. Whatever had hit it was designed to knock out heavily armoured equipment and if it was still in the area – it could certainly do to his MRAP what it had done to the Stridsfordon 90.

Behind the still smoking ruins of the infantry fighting vehicle lay 2 more armoured transports. He couldn’t make them out clearly enough to be sure, but they looked to him like armoured personnel carriers. Just like the lead vehicle, the one in the rear was still belching smoke, albeit a thinner, less dense, plume. Nevertheless, Joanas felt certain that whatever had happened here, had happened recently. No more than a day or so ago, probably less.

Scattered across the road around the vehicles were smaller dark forms. There was no mistaking what they were. Lying on the tarmac where they had fallen were about a dozen dead bodies.

The dead woman had been shot in the neck, the bullet entering from the front and exiting from the back and severing her spinal cord. Death would have been almost instantaneous, doctor Allmendinger observed. The woman wore the battle fatigues of the United Nations Counter Alien Incursion Force, but it was no alien that hat shot her. For all the horrors that poured out of the Other-Verse, no one had yet reported anything able to use more than rudimentary tools, certainly not a firearm. The Doctor glanced over at the ditch to the right of the road, the fatal shot had come from there, it had to have done. Looking back at the body in front of her she noticed the Norwegian flag beneath the woman’s UNCAIF insignia. Emblazoned on her left breast was the rank and name tape “Menig Børgnein”.

Doctor Allmendinger closed the soldier’s eyes and took her dog tags – she wasn’t sure why really, but it seemed to her to be the right thing to do. With a sigh, she rose and walked to where her nurse, Cherubin Lukeba knelt over a second body. The giant Congolese man rose as she approached, wiping his bald head with a handkerchief. She noticed he had taken the fallen man’s dog tags, and they hung from the fingers of his left hand.

“What have we here?” she asked.

“Kaptein Van Hausen, Norwegian, UNCAIF.” Cherubin began, “He has been shot three times in all doctor, the first shot hit him just beneath his armoured vest. He would have bled to death without medical assistance. The second shot hit his armour and did not penetrate. The third shot must have hit a weak point It went through his armour and into his chest – I see no exit wound. I think he died some time later though – not at once,” he handed the doctor the dog-tags he had taken from the fallen soldier. “These were his, I didn’t know what to do with them...” he trailed off as doctor Allmendinger took the proffered tags,

“I know Cherubin, I didn’t either – she showed him the tags she had taken from the private. “I’ll take a look at the third body on the road – you want to take a look at the one in the ditch?” Joanas had already swept the area for threats before letting the medics expose themselves to any possible danger and had reported seeing a body in the trench.

Cherubin nodded, then trotted over to the ditch, dropping down into the mud he began his assessment. Like the others, the soldier wore a UNCAIF uniform and bore his name and rank on his right breast - “Cabo Primero Salepo”,

“Spanish?” Cherubin muttered, a little taken aback, the other soldiers had been Norwegian. “Perhaps just a Spanish name from a family that had resettled in Norway?” he mused, under his breath. Cherubin checked the man’s arm, where he wore his UNCAIF insignia and the national flag of his country of origin. Cherubin’s brow furrowed as he saw the Spanish flag.

There was something else that had been troubling Cherubin as well. Something that he had not at once been able to put his finger on. Now, however, it dawned on him.

He stood up slowly and surveyed the scene again. He was right. This man hadn’t died assaulting the attackers in the ditch. This man had been firing from the ditch, at the road. Spent shell cases littered the ground all about his feet. It made no sense. Cherubin knelt down once more and checked the body for a cause of death. It didn’t take long to replace the shrapnel wound that had severed the man’s carotid artery. Several more sharpened fragments of metal were embedded in his body armour and more lay about the ditch.

That wasn’t all though, the ditch was littered with spent cartridges, and there were tracks too. At least four men had fired from here – maybe more. Three had left dragging a body with them. Then he saw it, on the back of the man’s neck, another wound – this one older and all but healed over. Little more than a scar now. A star-shaped scar just below the ridge of his helmet. Cherubin leant in to take a closer look.

“What could have caused this?” he muttered to himself. He had never seen its like before, but what was more puzzling was that it lay directly over the man’s spinal column. Surely any wound severe enough to leave such a mark here, where the central nervous system was at its most exposed, would have left the man in no state to continue in active service.

A tight knot began to form in Cherubin’s stomach as a theory began to form in his mind, one so absurd that just a few months ago he would have laughed at himself for even entertaining it. Of course a few months ago he would have laughed at the idea of an alien dimension breaking through to ours as well.

Joanas looked down from the ridge over the scene of carnage beneath him. There was no doubt that this was where the shots that destroyed the lead and trailing vehicles came from. More worrying than that though was that there was no doubt in his mind about what fired them either.

“Joanas to Knut, come in, over,” he called into his radio headset as he surveyed the trail once again. It wasn’t difficult, the ground was heavily churned up, but the vehicle that had done it had left tracks deep enough that the sides came over the top of Joanas’s combat boots in places where the ground was softest.

“Knut to Joanas, go ahead Joanas. Over.”

“I was right, there were several shooters up here, there are shell casings from multiple small arms, and they didn’t take the trouble to hide their tracks when they withdrew either, but that is not the worst of it. There are tracks up her that belong to...” he paused for a second, wincing at the thought of what he was about to tell the old man who had become the caravan’s leader, sighing he continued “... they belong to a main battle tank! Over”.

“The engine is shot!” Ember cursed as she peered under the bonnet of the APC. The vehicle had been turned into Swiss cheese by some form of weapons fire – what kind she didn’t know and didn’t care, but she had hoped to salvage the engine at least – and to load it onto her waggon.

“Can you fix it?” Father Businger asked, in heavily accented English.

“No father I mean literally shot. About a dozen of these great big things in it, they tore it up quite a lot.” She held up a tangled piece of metal almost the size of her fist to show the priest. For his part father, Businger looked pale, bathed in the glow of the headlights from the caravans lead vehicles. He gripped his pistol in a double handed grip and scanned the perimeter for any threats that Joanas and the reconnaissance team may have missed. Not that Ember expected them to have missed any and not that she was terribly certain how much extra security a clergyman with half a magazine of pistol ammunition would be, but she appreciated the gesture.

“Even if I could get an engine this size out of the housing with what little gear we have – and I don’t think I can to be honest – I doubt it would be worth the effort. It’s pretty torn up inside here. Maybe we just bleed the diesel out of the fuel tanks and get that bloody great gun off the roof – if it still works.”

“The 50 calibre” father Businger instinctively corrected her vague categorization of the weapon as a “bloody great gun.”

“How do you even know that? As a priest I mean?” Ember asked, wiping her face, and succeeding only in smearing oil over her pallid features, “I mean, are you really a preacher or some form of secret special forces agent?”. Uncertain if it had been a joke or a genuine question, father Mathias Businger laughed,

“I’m Swiss,” he said as if that alone was explanation enough. Seeing the confusion in Ember’s face he smiled, “National service. I did mine as the padre with the mechanised infantry, even Padres are expected to know what everything is.” He explained.

“Oh!” Ember flushed slightly, embarrassed for her lack of knowledge, “Sorry” she shrugged as she wiped her grease-stained hands on an oily rag before stuffing it back into the pocket of her overalls. Setting off around the side of the APC to replace a way onto its roof.

“No need to be sorry” Father Mathias grinned as he followed her, “No reason an English woman should know how we do things in my country. You do not have national service in England I think?”

“Nup” Ember shook her head “Used to, after the second world war, I think, but not in my lifetime.” she stopped, turned and pointed at the clergy man’s automatic pistol,

“Mind if I ask father – do you think you could use that if you had to? I mean, I seem to remember that the bible has something to say about killing.” The question sounded more impertinent than she had meant it to, but if he noticed, father Businger didn’t give any indication of it,

“You have seen the things that have come here from the Other-Verse my child. I am not certain God meant those monstrosities when he said it, and if he did, well – I may have some explaining to do when the time comes. Lucky for me he is a reasonable boss.”

Ember couldn’t help but laugh. She had never been much of a one for church, not that she didn’t believe in some form of god, she had never really stopped long enough to think about it seriously, but father Businger was a long way from the stuffy vicars of the Anglican church she knew from her childhood.

“Well, just so long as you shoot anything trying to eat me, okay?”

“Oh I will shoot at it for you, you can count on me for that! Although I am sad to say that short of it getting a fright at the loud noise and dying from a heart attack, I am not sure I will be able to kill it for you – I never could shoot straight!”.

“Great. Thanks, father. You are a comfort, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!”

She turned around and began to walk again and as she did something squelched beneath her heavy work boot.

“Ergh!” she grimaced, raising her boot to replace the eviscerated remains of some large, grub-like thing, about the length of her forearm, stuck to the bottom of it.

“What is that?” she asked, the tone of her voice making her disgust clear.

“There is another one here!” Father Mathias said, stooping over the body of a second creature, less than a metre from the one Ember had trod in,

“DON’T TOUCH IT!” Doctor Allmendinger’s voice was edged with hysteria as she came racing over the tarmac towards them, Cherubin Lukeba in her wake, his own pistol was in his hand and pointed at the strange thing on the road.

“Don’t touch it sir!” he yelled. “They get into your head!” Father Businger leapt back, just as the thing twitched – not dead after all it seemed. With a speed that took the priest by surprise, the thing on the road turned on him, a star-shaped set of mandibles spreading out as if to strike. He fired twice, but in his panic, the shots simply gouged holes in the road as the grub-like alien monstrosity scuttled towards him – then stopped suddenly. Embers heavy boot smashed down on it. The grub burst apart in a shower of pink and green gore.

“What are they?” Ember repeated,

“I’m not sure,” Doctor Allmendinger shook her head, “but I think they may be the reason two UN units were fighting each other.”

With a look of horror in his eyes father Businger pointed down the road,

“There are more.”