isn’t a test, maricone. I was just asking your opinion.”
Looking at the way the sun sliced into the Rift, then met an impenetrable wall of shadow, Andy Friarson would have to say that yes, if there was anywhere in the world where monsters existed, this was the place. He’d been to Baltimore, Edmonton and even the tiny crack in the earth in France they called the Vallée de la Mort. All of them were interesting, but they lacked the sense of foreboding that the Sonoran Rift had. There was a feeling about it that reminded him of the time he was in Croatia, hiding in a ditch with his camera clutched to his chest while Serbians lined up an entire village, shot them, and shoved them into a mass grave. Andy had known that at any moment he would be found out and added to the ditch. When one of the killers had turned to stare directly at his hiding place, Andy had known that the end was near. He’d closed his eyes and waited to die, unwilling to meet it face to face. He’d inexplicably survived that day, but had been left with the memory of the certainty of death he’d felt— which he felt again now, walking so near the place where monsters were born.
***
The relief battalion had met in an old silver mine east of Bisbee, Arizona. There were three hundred of them. Many were ex-convicts, with the rest ex-military, fresh from the war but unable to stop killing. With the promise of $100,000 for six months work and the opportunity to protect the sovereignty of America, they showed up in droves. The advertisements were posted on the Internet, Field and Stream, Gun and Rifle and Soldier of Fortune. Everyone was vetted in Phoenix first. With the help of Sheriff Arpaio, the Network created a criminal history for Andy, and with it, a desire to get out of Arizona. With a faked military record, his bona fides fit right into the model of a modern redneck protector the US government was arranging to guard the Rift and the American way of life.
***
Everyone had their own responsibilities. Andy and his partner, Leon Batista, were in charge of maintaining the landmines in sector six, an area just north and east of the Rift and one of twenty-two sectors. The mines were the last line of defense. If anything or anyone clawed its way free of the Rift, it would encounter sectors of seven rows of ten claymore mines, positioned far enough apart so that each row could operate independently, creating a cataclysmic explosion of ball bearings traveling at 4,000 feet per second if detonated.
But if anything got to the claymores, they were all in the shit. Andy had been issued an automatic pistol with the reminder that the bullets would be best used on himself so that when he was eaten, he wouldn’t know, or care.
The first lines of defense were right along the edge of the Rift. There was evidence where they’d tried to cap the crevice. Some of the steel webwork remained. But all attempts to cover the mighty hole had been stopped by the monsters. It seemed that as soon as anyone got within a few feet of the darkness, creatures would stir and come out to feed. Andy had been offered a tour of the area, but even his reporter’s craving for information couldn’t defeat the fear that locked his joints and filled his guts with lead-heavy dread.
Many of his Network colleagues thought he was a coward. He’d returned from Croatia three weeks into a three month assignment. He’d tried to explain to them what had happened, but they didn’t want to listen. They were reporters, they’d told him. Their job was to go into the mouth of hell itself and report what the devil was having for dinner. If you weren’t willing to do that, then why be a reporter?
Why, indeed.
Towers with Vulcan Canons were interspersed one hundred meters apart along both sides of the Rift. If anything tried to escape, the cannons could create a deadly web of interlocking fire. Each 20 mm pneumatically-driven, six-barreled, air-cooled, electrically-fired, Gatling-style cannon was capable of throwing 7,200 depleted uranium rounds each minute into anything that moved. Each tower had their own specified field to fire within, which kept the gunners from aiming directly at another tower. The very idea that anything could survive such a fusillade was unimaginable, but as Andy reminded himself, this was only