Apocalypse Crucible

ready to bring them in.”
A moment later, the mechanical basso thunder of the checkpoint commander’s voice rang out over the dark city. “Stop the vehicle! Stop the vehicle now!”
But the cargo truck didn’t stop. In fact, the vehicle gained speed, headed directly for the barricade two blocks over.
“Sniper teams,” Goose said, “bring the truck down. Leave the driver intact.” Before his words died away, shots roared from the Marine Corps’ .50-caliber Barrett sniper rifles as they joined the thunder of the Ranger M-24s firing on the truck.
Bullets struck sparks from the cargo truck’s metal hide. The canvas over the ribbed back end flapped loose, revealing huge tears. One of the tires went flat and the truck jerked to the right.
The driver immediately corrected the truck’s direction. He drove straight for the barricaded area. The truck’s transmission groaned like a dying beast and the vehicle gained speed. The flat tire skidded over the rough ground and threw off chunks of rubber.
“He’s not stopping!” Goose called, watching the action through the M-4A1’s starlight scope. “Bring down the driver! Bring down the driver!” It was a hard decision, and it had to be made on the fly.
The truck remained on a collision course with the barricade. A split second later, the driver opened the truck door and bailed from the bucking vehicle. He hit the ground in a flurry of flying dirt. Before he’d abandoned the vehicle, the driver had evidently locked the steering wheel into position. The truck drifted a little off the approach, but remained pretty much on target.
Even as the snipers and some of the Rangers stationed along the barricade kept up a withering rate of fire, the cargo truck made contact with the heap of abandoned cars and farm equipment. The resulting explosion blew the barricade apart. Cars, tractors, sandbags, and rocks skidded and flew backward and up into the air. The cargo truck became a mass of explosions. Yellow and red flames roiled in the air, and clouds of smoke filled the immediate vicinity.
Goose went deaf with the sudden, horrific cannonade of detonations. Even two blocks away, he was blown from his kneeling position by the concussive wave. Before he could get to his feet, a smoldering corpse landed on the rooftop near him.
Then dead men rained from the sky.

2
Highway 111
West of Marbury, Alabama
Local Time 2118 Hours
Cold darkness swirled around navy chaplain Delroy Harte as he trudged west. He felt a constant itch between his shoulder blades. He couldn’t get past the thought that something was following him, or that the thing had been following him since Washington, D.C.
Some thing. The thought stirred acid in the chaplain’s stomach and made him feel queasy. Memory of the demonic being that had confronted him and nearly killed him two days ago remained as fresh as the cuts and bruises on his body from the fight he’d had with it.
As he walked, he tried to resist the impulse to look over his shoulder, because he’d done it countless times in the last few hours and seen nothing. Finally, he looked back anyway. This time, too, he scanned the long length of highway and saw absolutely nothing that he didn’t expect to see. Despite the fact that the driving rain that had pounded Delroy for the last hour had abated somewhat and the drumming thunder sounded more distant, lightning still lashed the sky, the clouds still rumbled, and drizzling precipitation created a silver fog that dimmed the edges of his vision. Alabama’s stormy season in early March brought rain and lightning and managed to keep a hint of winter’s cold breath in the roaring winds that scoured the land.
Delroy couldn’t see far because of the curtain of rain. But even though he saw nothing out of the ordinary, his nagging feeling of being followed persisted. If the thing from Washington, D.C., still followed him, the creature remained just beyond his line of sight. His imagination told him the thing was out there, waiting, watching, choosing its moment to strike.
Like a predator, Delroy couldn’t help thinking, and he knew the assessment was dead on the money. The thing had come hunting for him in Washington, and it would have killed him if he hadn’t fought it off.
Despite the long military rain slicker he wore, Delroy was drenched and chilled to the bone. His back and legs ached from hiking for miles over the past few hours. At six feet six inches tall, built broad and muscular, he had a long stride. The military had taught him how to use that stride, and his efforts ate up the distance. For the last thirty-one plus years, he’d served the United States Navy as a chaplain. He was supposed to be a role model, someone who put his faith in God and prayed for the men who put their lives on the line every day they pulled on the uniform. He had seen action all around the world, in places he had never heard of while growing up in Marbury, places he would never forget.
As a navy chaplain, Delroy could have retired at twenty-five years, or again at thirty. At twenty-five years in, he could have simply pulled the pin and known that he’d done his service by his country. In fact, he’d put in a lot more years than most. But even when his wife, Glenda, had asked him to consider taking retirement, he hadn’t been able to step down from his post. Although he hadn’t known why then, he now knew that he still felt the need to do his duty by his God.
And maybe because he felt the need to recover his own faith, the faith he had lost while he’d been drowning in his own pain and confusion as he ministered to his men.
Then Delroy’s only son, Lance Corporal Terrence David Harte, had died in action in the Middle East. Later, at thirty years in, Delroy still didn’t retire because he hadn’t known what to do with himself. He couldn’t