it at the ready. "I'll watch our backs. Okay?"
"Okay, partner!" She grinned, excitement shining in her eyes. "Team Girl laughs in the face of death as we brave the dangers of the bog of doom! Ha-ha-ha!"
Eile grimaced and pressed the fingers of her left hand into her forehead. "Just...be careful where you step, will ya? Shadow, you stay here."
"I'll be sure to tell Mayv where to scatter the flowers."
She gave the cat a dirty look. "Thanks a bunch."
"Don't mention it."
Sunny made her way to the closest ridge and started out over it, probing the earth with her bow before she took each step. Eile made sure she stepped into Sunny's footprints. At first the ground seemed quite firm, but after a couple of yards Sunny started to sink. For a moment her heart seized up as she expected Sunny to be sucked down out of sight, but she only sank to her ankles. The ground was getting softer, but the vegetation seemed able to hold it together.
"Ick!" Sunny squealed as she extracted her foot.
"Keep moving!" She sank as well, but fortunately no deeper despite her armor. Apparently the herb mat was strong enough to bear their weight without breaking.
Sunny took another step. "I hope I tied the laces tight enough. I don't want to be stuck out here without boots."
After nearly twelve Dream-months, Eile had gotten pretty good at estimating the passage of time without a watch. It was sort of like dead reckoning. By her calculation, it took them a total of forty-five minutes to reach the central mound. It was a nerve-wracking trip; with each step, she expected them to stumble into quicksand or fall through an unsuspected dirt bridge and sink into a deep bog hole. But they made it safely, and she figured the journey back would be faster.
Sunny lifted her skirt and examined her feet. They were covered in muck half-way up her shins. "Ugh. I'm gonna need to get new shoes after this." She then dropped the hem and looked around, while Eile looked with her.
The mound was no different from any of the others, except larger. It was covered by an herb mat, but in its center stood the Golden Mushroom. It resembled its name exactly: a standard toadstool stalk and cap, but metallic gold in color. In fact, it looked like it was made of real gold.
"Here." Sunny held out her bow, and she took it.
"We'll take the same route back." She watched Sunny put on her gloves and go up to the fungus.
"Right." She spoke in an absentminded fashion as she knelt down.
In the same moment, Eile felt something strange in the woods around them. The hairs on the nape of neck stood up as her skin crawled and turned to goose flesh. Raising her sword, she turned around in all directions, trying to identify it, but she saw nothing. But she heard it: muffled thunderclaps like the stamping of huge feet. Then she felt the ground tremble with the concussion shock. Something was coming, something huge, but she couldn't pinpoint from where.
She looked back at Sunny. She had heard and felt it too, and she stood slowly as she looked around.
"Sunny!" She tossed her the bow. She caught it and nocked an arrow, ready for whatever came.
The sounds grew steadily louder as the tremors intensified. Then Eile saw them: gigantic anthropoid figures striding around the perimeter of the hollow, just beyond the tree line. She tried to count them, but lost track as they crossed and recrossed each other's paths. They moved faster than she expected from their size. She looked for Shadow, but the cat was gone.
Before she could try to find her, one of the figures emerged into the hollow. It came at her with startling speed as it covered great distances with each enormous stride.
"Sweet Jesus!" She saw it clearly for the first time: it looked like a tree!
Sunny screamed. Eile whipped around in time to see a second tree-creature stalking off with her in one hand. She struggled, kicked, and pounded on the fingers, but it had her in an iron grip.
"Eile!! Help me!!!" The monster merged with the woods and vanished from sight.
"Sunnyyy!!!" She started off after her. The creature coming up behind her passed her in two massive strides, then turned and swung an arm at her. It caught her before she could dodge, picked her up, and threw her backwards in a high, long arch. She landed in one of the pools with a shocking splash. Terrified, she flailed about for some moments, desperately trying to stay afloat, when she realized she was already resting on the bottom. She sat up and wiped detritus away from her face as she sputtered to expel the foul tasting water from her mouth.
She looked around and found that the tree-monsters were gone.
"Shit!" She groped for her sword, and when she found it she stood up and ran back to the central mound, heedless to any danger. She gained the top and glanced around, looking for the spot where the one creature had taken Sunny into the woods, but she saw nothing to indicate where they had gone.
"Arrrgh, dammit, dammit, dammit!" she raged, as much from misery as wrath.
"Eile!"
She turned and saw Shadow standing on a farther mound.
"I know where they took Sunny. Follow me!"
She didn't argue. She charged off the mound and across a ridge, and followed the cat as it crossed the rest of the hollow and dashed into the woods. Eile ran as fast as she could push herself, relying on instinct to avoid roots and branches, and luck to avoid what her instincts couldn't detect. The scenery around her passed in a blur as her sight focused into tunnel vision and she became oblivious to everything except the chase and her desperate desire to find Sunny.
God, whoever or whatever you are in this place, please let her be safe. I can't live without her; I can't stand to lose her. Please, I beg of you, let me find her alive.
From "The Denver Walker"
Seven F-15E Strike Eagles flew in a diamond wedge formation over eastern Colorado. They had departed Buckley Airforce Base in Aurora where they were temporarily stationed. They were headed due east towards the Kansas border, and their intended target. Each was armed with eight AIM-120 AMRAAM medium range air-to-air missiles, modified to deliver fragmentation warheads, and an AIM-54 Phoenix long range air-to-air missile, as well as their standard 20 mm M61A1 gatling guns.
Approximately fifteen minutes behind them followed a single A-6E Intruder attack aircraft. It carried a single BGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missile under its fuselage with a special warhead. The pilot was Lt. Col. Eile Chica. Her squadron, which included the Eagles, had been transferred from California a week before just for that mission. Their target was the Walker, which was on a direct course for Denver, and if not stopped would arrive in twelve hours. Where it went, nothing was left in its wake.
Eile's mind wandered as she zoned out the monotonous task of straight, level flight. She recalled the briefing she and her people had been given when they first arrived. Approximately nine months ago, a meteorite crashed into the ocean a couple of miles off the eastern seaboard of the United States. Though it had been a large one and had caused some flooding along the Atlantic coast, nothing more was thought about it.
Six months later, the Walker came ashore off New York City. Though it gleamed as if made of metal or plastic, it had a smooth, organic shape, with no obvious seams or joints. It consisted of a bulbous, misshapen body, like a russet potato, with numerous feathered and branched appendages. It stood and walked on three spindly legs. The surface of the body was featureless except for what looked like a single, blood-red eye covering about one-sixth the surface area. Except that instead of being used for seeing, it fired a disintegrator beam that could reduce anything to plasma in an instant. It destroyed everything in its path, leaving nothing but bare rock and a layer of dust.
The devastation caught everyone by surprise. All attempts to communicate with it went unanswered, though whether it simply ignored them or was unable to understand them no one could say. It travelled in a straight line, cutting a swath through the heart of the city twenty miles wide. The military responded immediately, but few weapons could get past its formidable defenses. Of those that did, most were destroyed by the disinteg
rator beam. The rest either couldn't penetrate the skin or only damaged the appendages, which grew back in a very short time. One aircraft that made a kamikaze run did succeed in damaging the body, but it too quickly regenerated.
From New York it continued cross-country, devastating Pittsburgh, Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and everything in between. Outside of Kansas City, the President finally authorized the use of nuclear weapons. He had been reluctant, for fear of civilian casualties, but he finally decided he had no choice; nothing else seemed to work. A cruise missile carrying a one megaton warhead detonated a mile above the Walker, well out of reach of its defenses. The shockwave smashed it into the ground, and the heat bloom seared and melted it. It seemed to be finished, and a research team was put together to study what was left. It took them a day to arrive, and they found the Walker not only intact, but nearly operational. It annihilated the team and went on to destroy Kansas City before continuing on towards Denver. The town of Hays had been wiped out just the day before.
The radio crackled. "Flight leader, Eagle flight, we have visual contact with target. ETA now fifteen minutes."
"Eagle flight, flight leader, we copy," Eile replied. She glanced at her navigator-bombardier. Maj. Sonne Hiver nodded back. "Confirm fifteen minute ETA. You are