Without Law 14, page 25
“That’s what it looked like where we just were,” Micheal said.
“Yeah,” Omar agreed. “Those same marks on the pavement, that’s what we were telling you about.”
“You saw their crazy guns, right?” Micheal asked.
“We saw them,” Anna assured the young man.
“They were shooting at us when you got here,” Tara said dryly.
“Right,” Micheal agreed. “They’re insane! We told you they had some weird stuff.”
“These must be like the guns that Jen saw,” Missy remarked. “She said they were a lot smaller than what we saw on the plane.”
The Cadets and the girls continued to talk behind me, but I focused on the barrier in front of me.
“That was crazy,” Paige said as she crouched down next to me. “Those guns are seriously something else. I really thought the cadets were crazy there for a while.”
“I did, too,” I said seriously. “I figured it was some sort of misunderstanding, but this is unexplainable.”
“They’re not like anything I’ve ever seen before,” Paige said. “Even in my weapons books.”
“I know,” I agreed with a nod. “One blast from those things could put a hole through someone. See where it started to fracture the concrete?”
“I see,” the brunette replied as she reached her hand out and blackened it with the residual soot. “We’re lucky that they aren’t powerful enough to get through concrete on the first try.”
“We are,” I agreed, and I felt the weight of those words hit me. If those weapons had been just a bit stronger, then we could all have been gone. This was unexplored territory, and it was extremely dangerous.
I scrubbed my fingers together where they were blackened from the soot on the concrete and brought them to my nose to smell the debris. It didn’t smell like soot from a typical fire, it had a sort of electrical smell to it like when a wire burnt out in an appliance.
“Electrical,” Paige said as she smelled her own hand.
“Right,” I agreed. “We need to figure out how those things work.”
“If you want to do that, then I think we’ve found a way,” Tara said, and I turned to see her crouching over one of the men at the back of the vehicle.
I walked over, and she pointed to one of their weapons that sat on the ground.
I knelt down to inspect the thing. The back part of it looked like any other black pistol, with a long vertical piece to wrap your fingers around and a trigger. In the front, however, it was a lot thinner than a typical pistol would be. On the barrel there was a sort of capsule at the top that was filled with a strange liquid. I picked up the weapon and it was extremely lightweight in my hand, lighter than the M9 on my hip. It was lighter than any pistol I’d ever held, actually. Almost as if it were made of carbon fiber instead of metal. I turned it around and watched as the liquid in the top of the barrel moved with it. It was like a level, and the more I looked at it, the stranger I found it.
“There’s more in the back of the car,” Anna said as she peered through one of the windows.
“Open it up,” I instructed.
We all drug the bodies out of the way and opened up the back of the vehicle. Inside we found a couple of suitcases, and inside of them were capsules that looked like the one on the top of the gun.
“These must be replacement cartridges,” Paige said as she examined them.
“That’s what I was thinking as well,” I agreed. “It looks like they’d fit right there.”
“What the hell are these?” Tara asked as she picked up a long, strange looking object.
It looked like it was made of some sort of metal and plastic, and it reminded me of a lightsaber or a baton, but it was definitely not anything I’d ever seen before. There was more fluid in it as well, and it moved around as the platinum blonde twisted the thing in her hand to inspect it.
“Do you think that’s a replacement for something?” Bailey asked, and she bit her lip. “Or is that a weapon, too?”
“I can’t say for sure,” I replied with a shake of my head.
“If it’s a weapon then how do you use it?” Tara asked as she continued to inspect the object.
“Maybe we should try and figure that out, away from everyone else,” Anna said with a raised eyebrow.
“Good point,” the platinum blonde said, and she blushed slightly.
I looked at the random assortment of things in the back of the vehicle. There were other strange looking objects with vials of fluid attached to them somehow. I couldn’t tell if they were all weapons or not, though. I’d only seen the soldiers use the small, handheld guns, but that didn’t mean that these weren’t weapons, too.
In the back of the vehicle they also had several more homemade bombs with detonators. It was apparent that they were planning on blowing up anything in their way, whether it be via bomb or with the weapons the Cadets had seen on their planes. These guys weren’t afraid of a little blasting.
“Geez,” Anna said as she pointed to the C4. “Where else were they planning to take out?”
“Anywhere that led into the city,” I said solemnly.
“So you think they’re trying to block themselves in?” Paige asked.
“I do,” I agreed. “If nobody can get in, then they can build up their troops more easily. More ships can arrive with soldiers, planes, vehicles, whatever they need. They’ll only leave one route in open, and it will be heavily guarded. That’s what they’ll use when they head inland for the invasion.”
“Fuck,” Tara whispered.
“What do we do?” Omar asked with a frown. “I hate the thought of them taking over my city.”
“I do, too,” I told him with a shake of my head. “And we’re not going to let it happen.”
Jen and her family had said that they already had control of the city, but I wasn’t about to let them have any more. If they wanted to try and barricade themselves in, then I wasn’t going to make it easy for them. I’d stake out every bridge if I had to in order to keep them from blowing it up. The weapons attached to their planes were large enough to take out a car, but apparently not quite strong enough to take out a bridge. If they were, then the Koreans would have no use for the C4, they would just use the planes instead. There had to be a reason they were using bombs.
It hit me, then, if these little capsules were the refills for the weapons then that meant that they had to run out at some point. Even if the planes were able to take out bridges, that would take an immense amount of whatever the hell this stuff was, assuming they worked off of the same power supply. If so, then it was probable that they had a limited supply, at least until they could get more over on boats.
“We need to figure out what the hell this liquid is,” I said as I looked at the small weapon in my hands.
“How do we even go about doing that?” Anna asked. “We have no idea where to start.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Paige said, and she pursed her lips. “It's got to be some sort of chemical reaction that’s taking place to create that charge of energy.”
“I thought you said it smelled electrical,” Bailey pointed out.
“I did,” the brunette agreed. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not a chemical reaction. We need to figure out what’s in here and probably take one of these guns apart so we can see what it's doing to make the liquid so volatile.”
“I bet Kimmy could help with that,” Bailey said.
The blonde was right, Kimmy and Paige were probably our best bet for figuring out what the hell these things were. I personally had no idea where to even start. I was used to weapons and ammunition and all things of that sort, but I’d never been the greatest in science class, and this seemed like science-fiction come to life. I’d never really liked those kinds of movies because they seemed so far-fetched, but now, as I stared at this strange little machine, I started to feel as though maybe I should have watched a few more of them.
“I think that’s a good idea,” I told Bailey. “We should get Kimmy to help.”
“We should have some supplies from the science department on campus still,” Paige agreed with a nod.
“I’m just glad to not feel so crazy anymore,” Missy said as she stared into the back of the vehicle.
“Yeah,” Omar agreed. “Even though we all knew what we saw it just seemed too strange to be true.”
“Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction,” I said grimly.
“Hell yeah it is,” Micheal said with a shake of his head. “We knew about the guns and the huge things on the planes, but what the hell are all of these things in here?”
“Yeah,” Omar agreed. “They have so many weird weapons in here.”
“We can’t even be sure that all of them are weapons,” Paige pointed out.
“What else could they be?” Missy asked. “They all have those same weird little pods.”
“That’s the energy source,” Paige said. “But some of these could be intended for other things that we haven’t even thought of yet.”
“I’m with Missy,” Tara said. “I think they’re all weapons. Why else would they have them with them in the back of their truck?”
“I don’t know,” Paige said with a frown. “But we won’t know until we thoroughly inspect all of them.”
“I don’t know if we should take them apart,” Bailey said nervously. “What if this liquid is toxic outside of the little containers?”
“That’s a good point,” Missy said.
“We have no other choice,” Paige explained. “We’ll be careful, but we have to understand how they work in order to be able to combat them.”
“I want to see it,” Anna said, and her voice cut through everyone else’s as she looked at me with a serious face.
The rest of the group went quiet as I held out the weapon to Anna, but she shook her head.
“No,” she said, “I mean I want to see it in action.”
“Yeah,” Tara agreed. “Shoot it, Tav.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said. I had no idea how the thing worked, and I didn’t want to harm any of us in the process of trying to figure that out.
“Come on,” Paige pushed. “We’re going to have to shoot it eventually anyway.”
The brunette had a point, so I nodded and pushed my hair back out of my eyes.
“Be careful,” Bailey said with a frown.
“Those things are super powerful,” Micheal added. “Maybe you should shoot it off the bridge.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I agreed, and I stepped over to the edge.
I looked down at the city below and then at the strange weapon in my hand. I’d fired off so many different types of guns and things that something like this shouldn’t scare me in the slightest, but it did. I had no idea how this gun worked. It wasn’t the usual ammunition and hammer and everything that typically made a gun work. No, this was all different. It was all...wrong. Something about the whole situation felt surreal.
I looked back to see my whole group standing behind me with wide eyes, ready to see how this went.
After a deep breath, I lifted the weapon and pulled the small trigger. It was a familiar feeling, but the end result was anything but familiar. A straight blue light came out of the end of the machine, accompanied by a small fanlike sound that only lasted for a second. The laser like beam looked almost cartoonish, and I felt like one of the main characters in those science fiction movies I hated so much.
“Whoa,” Tara said as she took a step closer. “Do it again.”
This time I looked at the small capsule on top and noted how full it was, then I pulled the trigger and the light appeared once more. I checked the capsule after I was done and found that it didn’t seem affected at all. There was no obvious depletion of the liquid, which meant that they probably lasted a long time.
Damn.
We had to figure out what these things were made of. If it was a compound that was easily produced, then we could be in deep shit. The Koreans had obviously prepared and created a stockpile already, but if it was something easily made then as long as they could get their hands on the ingredients we would have a fight on our hands.
On the other side, if the compound wasn’t easily created, then we might have the advantage. Especially if we could somehow destroy their supply. That would be risky, but it was a risk we’d just have to take.
Before I could consider any of that, though, we needed to figure out just what the hell these things were. We couldn’t fight against something if we didn’t know how to destroy it.
“How did it feel?” Anna asked as I turned back to the group.
“Strange,” I said as I pointed the weapon at the ground. “Incredibly strange.”
“All of the soldiers we saw had them,” Bailey said. “How many do you think they have total?”
“We have eight now,” Tara said.
“If all of them still work,” Paige pointed out.
“Eight is still nothing compared to the amount that their military must have,” Anna said, and she looked at me seriously.
“What do we do?” Missy asked, and her voice was slightly panicked. “I mean, we knew they had weird weapons, but how do we fight against them?”
I didn’t know how to answer Missy. At that point I had no idea how to fight against them. We’d managed to take out an entire scouting troop, but that was less than ten men. If they had truly taken over Boston, then we were talking about hundreds, maybe even thousands of soldiers that were already there. And if every one of them had a weapon like this then there was no telling how much damage they could cause if they went unchecked.
We’d already seen earlier with that family that the Koreans didn’t care about civilians or any sort of casualties. Not only did we need to figure out how these weapons worked, but we needed to figure out what their plan was. How many troops did they have in the U.S. already? Where were they posted? What was their ultimate goal?
We needed to get to Boston, and fast. I wasn’t going to allow these foreign invaders to take over my country. They’d have to get through me and my team first. America was our home, and we weren’t going to allow it to be taken over by these child killing pigs.
I took a deep breath to calm my racing mind, then I addressed my team.
“We’re going to figure this out,” I said in a calm, but serious voice. “For ourselves, and for our country. We won’t let invaders take over our home.”
“Right,” Tara agreed with a hard nod. “Fuck these assholes.”
“Fuck these assholes,” I repeated with a grin. “We aren’t going to let them win.”
End of Book 14
End Notes
Thank you for reading Without Law 14. I’ll start working on book 15 as soon as this book has 100 reviews. So please leave a nice review here.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Eric Vall
Eric Vall, Without Law 14
