Epilogue
Day 11
Melissa, Texas
“Form up, form up!” Pops Sullivan hollered. The men and women around him clattered and shifted, their makeshift shields and weapons clanking and clacking. “Mind your spacing.”
The ground rumbled as they moved, a hundred men and women who less than two weeks before had been accountants, clerks, business people, and all the other occupations that no longer existed. Now they stood shoulder to shoulder, makeshift weapons forged out of truck leaf-springs, sharpened metal poles, sheet metal hammered into protective plates, and even one man carrying a ‘Stop’ sign backed with plywood.
They were no Roman legion, no Greek phalanx, hell, they barely even qualified as a football scrimmage line. Yet, they were all that stood between the enemy and the five hundred other men, women, and children that they protected. They were the last and only line of defense.
“Get the fuck back in line, Legolas!” A woman shouted. Pops turned to see Martha Lopez stab a finger at a tall blonde kid carrying a bow and ready to fire at their yet to be seen enemy. “You break formation one more time and you’ll be limping home with that bow up your asshole, got me!”
The thundering of hooves caused Pops to turn his attention once more as his NCO continued with her tirade. Half a dozen horses pounded dirt and made their way across a former grazing field.
Bobby Neville was in the lead, an AR-15 across his back and the same makeshift armor everyone wore protecting his body. There had been an amateur blacksmith and a professional metal worker among the survivors they had gathered since leaving Plano, and for the last several days they had been hammering and working steel to create weapons and armor. It wasn’t enough, but it would do.
The horse skidded to a stop and Bobby was off of it in a heartbeat. The young man snapped a salute, one which Pops grimaced at.
“It looks about three hundred of them,” Bobby said. “Angry as hell and stampeding over. Be here in about fifteen.”
“Shit,” Pops muttered. “They got their big boys with them?”
“No, sir. They’re mostly Barrows, they got their Sows back in the trees, about another two hundred of them. The Boars aren’t coming out nor many of their Gilts.”
“Thank Christ for that,” Pops said and turned to face the small gathered army.
“The Orcs on their way?” Malcolm asked, pushing his way forward.
Pops Sullivan had seen all sorts of crazy since the Integration, animals that could not exist now prowled the land, things that should be impossible were occurring everyday. Yet, the one thing that truly hit him the hardest was seeing his bacon and pork chops making weapons and trying to kill him.
He wasn’t a hunting man, yet he knew many of his former military friends who enjoyed the sport. They talked about the wild hogs that were plaguing Texas and how they went out to hunt them. He’d seen their trophy pictures, massive creatures that weighed up to seven hundred pounds.
Integration had changed things and most profoundly it had changed the hog population of Texas. No longer did they walk on four legs, instead they stood upright, their forelegs turning into thick muscular arms with two fingers and a thumb. They were still massive, the boars weighing over five hundred pounds each, with thick legs and a temperament that hadn’t been altered.
Malcolm called them Orcs, something from a video game or something. Pops just called them Hogs, but the Orc name had caught on.
Two days before they had been hit by a raiding party of Orcs, a single massive boar, ten barrows, and two gilts. They had killed seven of Pops’ people and injured two dozen more, the boar had been responsible for almost half of the deaths and injuries and the two gilts had been responsible for the other half.
The boars were deadly in a tussle, but it was the gilts that were the real danger. Boars were the big boys that were all muscle and brawn, but the gilts used magic. They threw fireballs and lightning. From what Pops found out later, they were all youngish female hogs, so the name gilts stuck. The barrows were just cannon fodder, forcibly castrated males that charged with wooden spears and junk armor.
Pops had talked with a former hog hunter named Jasper, the man was a semi expert in the field. He had looked at the corpses over the last few days of fighting and had said the Orcs were a combination of wild hogs and domesticated hogs. It seemed their more wild brethren had freed their captive relatives and they formed up a massive tribe that was laying waste to the country side.
Survivors had poured in over the days, they told horrific stories of the hogs descending upon their strongholds and farms, killing and eating everything they could lay their hands on. The old tale of hogs eating people was alive and true, except now they carried knives and spears and took the time to cook their meat.
Truth be told, it wasn’t as if they were the only one partaking of the flesh. Pops had come across many a cook fire that had a hefty slab of ‘pork’ being fried up. He would have put a stop to it, there was something terribly wrong about eating a creature that carried weapons and organized itself into a tribe, but then again they were all starving. The hogs had denuded the land of most edible things, including livestock and people. They had raided grocery stores, used their powerful noses to seek out even hidden caches of food and edibles. They were omnivores and they did eat anything and everything.
Six hundred people was a large number and everyone was starving. God forgive him, but the damn things tasted just like pork.
The army of hogs began appearing across the field from them. The old grazing field was about three thousand feet long and half as wide, to their left flank was a dense line of trees used as a windbreak and to their right flank was a wide irrigation canal. The hogs weren’t any kind of tactical geniuses and they were all about upfront charges and battles. The human army wasn’t all that different, they barely had any cohesion and not enough time to practice and train for this kind of battle. There would be no masterful feints and tactics deployed, instead it would be a straight up brawl.
Pops looked at the faces of the men and women beside him. The idle chatter had stopped as they saw the numbers coming out of the distant tree line. A hundred people seemed like a lot, but three hundred man-sized creatures carrying everything from sharpened spades to wood spears was enough to loosen the bowels.
Pops cleared his throat and stepped out before the gathered people. He looked up and down the line, a hundred faces all focusing on him.
“Looks like meat’s back on the menu, people!” Pops shouted, stalking up and down the line. Grim faces stared back at him, fear evident in their expressions, but they held firm. “I don’t know about you, but I do love me some bacon in the morning.”
“Bacon!” someone shouted. Soon the word was echoing from a dozen mouths.
“Bacon! Bacon! Bacon!”
A massive boar pushed its way to the front of the barrow line. A thick specimen that was covered in what looked to be license plates tied to a thick under padding of leather jackets. The boar carried a pair of red metal fire axes and with the ease that he swung them showed just how strong he was.
“Find those gilts!” Pops ordered.
There was a shuffle as people with scopes and binoculars began scanning the battle line. Behind them were half a dozen of his best shots, using scavenged firearms. Pops didn’t know if something had happened to weapons or what, but there were so few remaining weapons and ammunition available in their scavenging. It was odd, especially in this part of America.
As one, the hogs began squealing. The sound crossed the three thousand feet that separated the two groups, a high pitched and terrifying noise. Pops could feel the shift of emotion in their own battle line, he pointed to a young man in a high school band uniform.
“Hit the beat, son,” he ordered.
A dozen kids began pounding on drums, it was ragged and scared, but within a moment they began to find their rhythm. Soon the rest of the battle line began to stomp their feet, bang their weapons against their shields, or bob their head to the slow and steady beat. It wasn’t music, the band was made of kids that weren’t able to fight, but wanted to contribute. So they had salvaged some drums from the local high school. The deep, almost heartbeat rhythm of the percussion instruments caused nerves to settle and the fear seeping into the soldiers to ease.
That was good, as the hogs began their approach. They trotted slowly, although they were tough with even the barrows going at three hundred pounds, they had short legs and weren’t all that fast. They also didn’t have any form of ranged weaponry or artillery, except for the mana wielding gilts.
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The ground began to rumble as the hogs picked up speed, they were about eight hundred feet out.
“Catapults!” Pops shouted.
“Catapults!” the call went out.
There was a loud snap and a swoosh, Pops looked above him and watched as one, then two, and finally three flaming balls began flying across the field toward the incoming horde of hogs. The first ball of fire splashed down a hundred feet before the hogs, the second fifty feet beyond that, and the third hit detonated among some of the hogs in the left flank. Fire exploded outward, a poor man’s napalm of gasoline, Styrofoam, and soap flakes. Six barrows began screaming as they were covered in flames and writhed on the ground, the trotting didn’t stop, but Pops saw some of the hogs falter in their march.
“Reload!” the artillery captain began shouting. There was huffing and grunting and shouting as the two dozen men and women handling the catapults began reloading. Within a minute they were ready to fire again and the hogs had crossed one hundred feet.
“You find those gilts?” Pops demanded.
“No, sir,” Jasper Rodriguez, the former hog hunter said. He had a long hunting rifle on his back and a pair of binoculars around his neck. “They might be using some kind of camo.”
“Shit,” Pops muttered as another whoosh sounded and three more flaming balls soared overhead. The hogs were wiser now, after seeing half a dozen of their fellow barrows go up in flames. “Take down that boar, keep your eyes peeled for those gilts.”
“Righto, sir,” Jasper gave a salute and rushed back to the riflemen, shouting orders.
“Lopez, archers,” Pops said.
“Archers, nock!” Sergeant Lopez yelled, the twenty men and women who carried bows raised arrows into their bows. There were a variety of weapons on display, everything from overly complicated compound bows, an actual longbow, and several crossbows, and a recurve bow. “Did I fucking say draw, Legolas!”
“N-no?”
“Then why the fuck are you drawing your bow, Legolas!”
“M-my name is Cody,” the kid said.
“Until God or Pops says otherwise, you’re in the god damn Sullivan Militia and you will follow orders. Until the day you can out-shoot, out-fight, and out-fuck me, then your name is whatever the fuck I say it is! Got me!”
“What the hell is that lady’s problem,” Malcolm said. He turned to the archers, ready to say something. Pops grabbed him and pushed him back in the line.
“Mind your business, private. Sergeant Lopez will deal with her soldiers as she sees fit.” Pops said.
“But-“
“You wanted in this battle, you wanted to fight, now you’re fighting. Maintain the line, cover your sector, watch your spacing, and follow orders,” Pops said in a low voice.
“But-“
“The only thing I want to hear out of your mouth is ‘sir, yes, sir’.”
Malcolm glared at him, but then stopped as he realized their conversation was being eavesdropped on by everyone around them. It wasn’t hard to notice as no one was making any kind of attempt at stealth. He gulped and nodded.
Pops continued staring at him.
“Sir, yes, sir!” Malcolm said.
“Gunners, archers, fire at will,” Pops ordered. The hogs had passed the five hundred feet line. He could feel the ground rumbling under foot, the squeals were getting louder and louder.
The roar of gunfire filled the air, the smell of cordite soon filled Pops’ senses. He looked down range and watched as hogs began to stumble and fall, many erupting in gouts of blood as the variety of weapons fired at them. A lot of them were simple hunting rifles, everything from a .22 to .308 and only a few of the proudly touted AR-15s. The range was too far for shotguns or pistols, so they were kept as close in weapons. The arrows began sprouting among the hogs too, the broadhead arrows punching through cheap armor and sinking deep into the pork.
The hogs didn’t stop as scores of their fellows died, they kept trotting forward, a rhythmic grunting emanating from them.
“Gunners hold. Caltrops forward!”
“Caltrops!” two dozen men and women broke from the line, carrying plastic milk crates filled with balls of sharpen steel and iron. They hurriedly tossed the steel spikes out among the trampled grass and began rushing back.
“Nail strips!” Pops ordered.
“Nail strips!” Another two dozen men and women rushed forward and began unrolling nail strips. It was another simple defense that had been copied form the road spikes that Pops had seen as they marched up from Plano. Three inch framing nails had been punched through thick rubber strips and now they were being laid out in a staggered formation, fifty feet from the battle line.
“Gunners, resume!”
The gunfire began as the hogs reached the three hundred foot line. There was no missing the hogs now, but the big boar hadn’t been taken down. The bullets pinged off a blue shield that enveloped the brute.
“The fucker’s got a mana shield,” Malcolm said, noticing Pops’ gaze.
“There’s a gilt with him somewhere,” Pops said. “Jasper!”
“I see it!” the man shouted back.
“Steady people!” Pops shouted. He unhooked his axe and held it high. “Steady!”
As he turned to face the oncoming horde, Pops noticed the hogs part down the middle, like a flock of birds suddenly changing direction. As a single unit they left a wide open spot down the center of their ranks.
Pops didn’t have enough time to shout the warning when a swirling beam of raging fire shot down the center of the hogs’ ranks and then smashed directly into their front lines. Four soldiers were enveloped in flames; they screamed and burned alive, their skin melting and sloughing off in thick sheets. The beam of fire didn’t stop there, instead it continued onward, smashing into the low hill behind them, where the artillery had been stationed. Great gouts of fire and dirt erupted from the small hill and Pops could hear screaming from the artillery soldiers.
“Plug up that hole!” Neville yelled.
“Gilts! Kill those fuckers!” Jasper was screaming and the roar of gunfire filled the air.
Pops felt a hand grab him and help him to his feet. He blinked and saw the face of his son, who was shouting something. Pops shook his head and clamped down the the emotions that were racing through him.
“Steady!” Pops shouted, his voice carrying over the din of fear and gunfire. “Stea-“ Pops didn’t manage to finish the word before he felt a great and terrible weight smash into his left side. He went flying and hit the ground a good ten feet from where he had stood.
If it hadn’t been for the shield that he had strapped on his left arm, Pops thought he would have lost it or at a minimum had all the bones pulverized. He barely had time to grunt in pain, before another massive thud pounded into the ground beside him. The red metal head of a fire axe protruded from the ground inches from his head.
Pops rolled and came up to his feet. He looked up, he didn’t stop at a man’s height, but kept going and stared into the snarling snout of the armored boar. Peeking out from behind the massive creature’s shoulder were the crimson insane eyes of a gilt, it let out a squeal and began launching fireballs.
The fireballs weren’t aimed at him, instead they detonated among the gathered soldiers. The armored boar was swinging his axes wide, catching unwary soldiers and sending them flying. The fucker was disrupting their lines and getting away with it.
Soldiers screamed and writhed on the ground, it wasn’t the same as the fire beam they had been hit with, but being shrouded in flames was not something to brush aside.
Pops launched himself forward and then cursed as the axe blade rebounded off the blue mana shield the boar had. He dodged the boar’s counterattack, for a moment realizing that the shield was lowered as the red fire axe crashed into his own.
Malcolm was suddenly there, blood and dirt covered his face and the sheet metal armor he had been wearing was dented and pocked. He threw himself against the blue mana shield and it began to crackle with energy.
Whatever Malcolm was doing, it seemed to bother the gilt as she screamed something and the boar whipped around, axe raised. The blue tint around the boar disappear as the mana shield dropped. Pops threw his axe, the blade flashed across the distance and embedded itself into the back of the gilt. The gilt screamed once more, but the heavy blade had lodged into the base of her neck, practically severing her head.
The boar smashed down with his axe; Malcolm raised his own mana shield, but it wasn’t enough. The shield shattered and the heavy red axe slashed downward, opening up Malcolm’s chest.
Pops was already running forward, he grabbed a machete that had been dropped and skidded forward, slashing at the boar’s unprotected legs. The boar shrieked and lost his balance, Pops was already up and brought the blade down upon the right arm of the creature. There was a loud crunch and more screaming as he severed the arm and with it the axe it held. With a backhand strike he sliced open the neck of the boar.
He turned and rushed to his son, blood was welling from a jagging cut across his chest. To his relief he saw that it wasn’t too bad, a flesh wound. The sheet metal armor and padding underneath had saved his life. Although it would leave one hell of a scar.
“You okay?” Pops asked.
“No,” Malcolm said. “I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying. I’ve seen worse shaving.”
“Why were you shaving your chest?”
Pops chuckled and then looked up as he heard squealing. The rest of the Orc horde had hit the caltrops and nail strips, many falling to the ground and being trampled by those behind them.
“The fight’s not over, kid. Get up and lend a hand.” Pops grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet, Malcolm let out a painful gasp.
The hogs began dropping as they were within shotgun and pistol range. Bobby Neville was in a standing shooting stance, firing off slow and steady rounds from his AR-15; Jasper and Lopez were raining down hell upon the hogs.
Malcolm grunted, but he raised his hands, a ball of energy began forming above him. Pops watched him and a moment later he threw the ball at the oncoming hogs. It was as if a giant hand smashed down on the group of hogs, not just knocking them down but causing them to explode into blood and viscera. Pops grimaced.
A barrow appeared before him, squealing. He took its head and the next to come after that. The hogs hit their line, but not in the brutal impacting way they were expecting. After the death of their leader and the gilts, most of the steam had run out of the barrows. The last straw wasn’t the gunfire, but the caltrops and nail strips that embedded themselves into their hooves. They limped and squealed in pain and their charged came to a halt, after that they were sitting ducks.
Pops found his axe still embedded in the neck of the gilt. She was a small thing, barely bigger than a child, but he had seen that insanity in her eyes. It seemed to be the hallmark of the gilts, something about the mana they wielded made them batshit crazy.
Around him the rest of the militia was milling about, a sad and happy feeling filling the air. They had lost twenty people, and nearly three times that injured. Byrd was going to be busy tonight.
Pops looked across the battlefield. The hogs had taken a big hit, more than half of their numbers had been killed, but that didn’t mean they were out of the fight. There were the sows that could and would fight, along with all the other boars that were in their camp, ant then there was the remainder of the gilts. The latter being something Pops did not want to face.
He hooked his axe to his belt and sighed. This was only one battle and soon there would be another.