Integration Page 8

  “Yeah, good luck and all that,” said Angela before kissing Paul hard and leaping into the air. Sandstorm signed I’m off and slithered away.

  And with the departure of his girlfriend and friend, Paul felt very much alone now—walking through the field, listening to his own heart and also listening for other sounds not of natural creation. He heard nothing save for the breathing of the other Rangers who’d gone ahead in pairs at three, nine and twelve o’clock. He spoke quietly into his intercom. “Angela, have you got anything?”

  “I’m flying over you right now,” she said. “I can’t see any movement.”

  Stander’s voice crackled through. “We’ve got you on the scanner. Ooze is tracking your movements as well. Says he can’t see anything.”

  It was dark out and getting darker. He heard the voices of the other men whispering to each other on the intercom. “How’s everyone doing?” he asked and immediately felt foolish for not using military jargon.

  “We’re doing just fine, freak,” replied one of the men. He recognized the voice as Moreau, a short and stocky man shaped like a bullet. “And how about you get the hell off this line and do your job—”

  “Knock it off, Moreau,” Stander broke in. “You do your job. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” came the desultory reply.

  Silence fell, and with it, the cold settled in, but there was no wind and no noise. With the stalks so high, how could anyone see any movement? Angela’s eyesight was off the scale, as was his, but if he couldn’t see anything on the ground…

  “I got less than zero, just dead cornstalks and not much else,” Paul said, as he set off on a quick trot, keeping his movements tight. He tried to avoid making undue noise, but every now and then he stepped on a dry stalk or branch and he hoped the cracking sound it made wouldn’t alert the enemy.

  Were they really here? He didn’t think so, but then an instinct—perhaps a sixth sense—made the hair on the nape of his neck stand up. A feeling of dread ran through him, as if a nameless presence had suddenly popped into existence with the express purpose of blotting out all light and all life.

  Fighting down his fear, his trot segued into a run, but when he ran into a smell, he halted. His nose wrinkled as he detected an unusual odor. Pungent and unpleasant, it smelled like ammonia and something more. “I got something. It’s a smell. Tell your men.”

  “You’ve got a smell?” Stander’s southern accent got sharper. “What kind of smell?”

  Since the changeover, Paul had found he could differentiate odors, not just the major ones, but the minor ones as well, along with which animal made them. However, he wasn’t sure about this one. At first he thought it was ammonia, similar to cat’s pee, but it was far stronger, deeper… Had the air been stone, the stink would have cut clear through it. Yet, the others hadn’t detected it. It must have been too faint for them.

  “I see something,” Angela’s voice suddenly cut in. “It’s about two hundred yards to your right. It’s big…and it’s moving in the direction of your men, colonel. Tell them to move back.”

  “We don’t retreat.”

  The order came through succinctly. Talk about being gung-ho! At the same time, though, he had his orders, and Rangers didn’t back down. Silence ruled, and the question arose in Paul’s mind of how something that big could move so silently.

  “We have movement over here,” one of the Rangers said.

  “Where are you?” Paul asked, suddenly feeling things were about to go bad.

  “He’s about three hundred yards to your left,” Ooze’s voice broke in.

  Paul immediately started to run. “What do you have?”

  The panicked voice of the Ranger came through. “We’ve got two bogeys. They’re… Holy sh—”

  His voice abruptly transitioned into a scream. Paul doubled his speed, not bothering to move silently. He crashed through the withered crops, hoping he wouldn’t be too late. As he approached the location, the smell of ammonia got stronger…and he stopped when he saw the bodies.

  Or what was left of them. They’d been incinerated. The smell of burnt flesh, organs and human waste was almost overwhelming, and he fought down the urge to gag.

  “Hija,” he breathed through his mouth, as the stink verged on overwhelming. It had all the earmarks of the living torch. “Colonel,” he said into his mouthpiece, “I got a bad feeling about this. I’m going to second what Angela said and ask you to pull your men back. What’s coming… They won’t be able to handle it.”

  “I’ve got my orders, and my men have got theirs,” Stander replied in a stony voice. “Now stick to the plan.”

  Paul was about to say said plan had gone out of the window, but another scream to his right sounded, high and shrill, and he changed course to follow it. The scream echoed in his ears, but it soon died away to a horrid gurgling sound, accompanied by another sound of bones being cracked. Simultaneously, he heard Angela yelling, “It’s big. You got a zombie…”

  A zombie… Oh, this was definitely not good. Once more, he reversed course and dashed over to where the cries were originating. Through his intercom, he heard the voices of the men shouting for help and asking for backup, and the voice of Stander asking what in the hell was going on.

  “Good question,” Paul muttered, as he brushed aside the cornstalks and headed to offer help. He only prayed he’d be in time to do something.

  Along the way, he heard Angela yelling something. “I’m on the ground,” she said. “Something’s here. It’s shooting at me, and— Ouch!”

  Her line went dead after that. “Angela, talk to me!”

  No answer and he covered another few hundred yards before he pulled up short. Ten feet in front of him, a seven-foot giant wearing a bloody white shirt and threadbare jeans was gnawing away on one of the soldiers’ heads. The other man lay on the ground, his skull crushed and empty. Bits of brain matter hung from the zombie’s mouth. He turned around, grinning, and blackened teeth covered with blood and flesh shone out in the pale moonlight.

  It looked exactly like CF, his old zombie ally, but CF had died. “CF, is that you?” asked Paul in disbelief, keeping his distance.

  “I don’t know CF,” the zombie said in a hoarse voice. “I know only brains.”

  It wiped its mouth and smiled again, a horrid, chilling smile that made Paul wish he were elsewhere. This was not the CF he’d known. The old CF had had a certain aura of gentleness about him—a simplicity and decency. This thing’s eyes? They held only emptiness…and something akin to evil—bottomless, immediately palpable and altogether frightening.

  “Those brains were good,” he grated.

  Paul started forward, but something else blindsided him and knocked him into the air. He landed heavily on his back twenty feet away. Shaken, he sat up and swore. “What in the hell?”

  Swiveling his head in every direction, he saw the field was empty. Impossible… How could two things just disappear? He sniffed the air, tested it, smelled nothing. Then he made a perfunctory check over his body. No injuries—he’d been lucky this time. Nothing was hurt, save his pride. That had taken a beating. He’d let his enemies outsmart him.

  Enemies… They were still out there! Signaling on his intercom, he asked each man for his location. “Hawkins, Miller, Moreau… You guys there?”

  Nothing but static sounded. Then a call came through. It was Stander. “We got movement at Bertha! Anyone out there? Acknowledge, damn it!”

  Stander continued to call for a response, but the line abruptly went dead and Paul heard only static.

  Uttering a curse and wheeling around, he charged toward the location of the battle transport. He got within twenty yards when something rammed into him from the side and smashed him to the ground. It smelled of ammonia and worse. When his vision cleared, a nightmare stood in front of him. “What in the hell are you?”

  �
�Hell’s got nothing to do with it,” the thing answered, as it took a step forward and shook itself all over.

  It wasn’t the zombie. This creature resembled a six-foot tall slug, with pale brown slimy-looking skin, numerous pores and with a very human-looking—although extremely ugly—face. It had a number of tiny arms, ten on each side of its body, but the two uppermost arms, roughly in the same position as they’d be on a person, were enormous, roughly thirty inches across, totally out of proportion to the rest of its frame.

  “My name’s Sluggo,” the creature said in a raspy voice. “You’re not going to be much of a problem.”

  “It depends on how you think of it,” Paul quipped, while mentally gearing himself up for a fight.

  “Try it. You won’t like it.” Sluggo waved him forward.

  In an instant Paul bounded to his feet, waded in then began to pummel the creature’s body, but his fists bounced off the creature’s hide. “That’s not going to work,” Sluggo gloated. Without even straining, he shoved Paul back.

  Frustrated, Paul started in again, but instead of fighting with his two massive arms, the tiny arms at the side of the creature’s body shot out a good three feet and grabbed him around the waist. He tried to fight his way free, but the arms continued to hold him an iron-hard grip. “Yeah, got you now, punk,” Sluggo said.

  Snuffling in the manner of a pig and in a blur of motion, his arms started to revolve in an impossible windmill action, moving very, very fast. Paul tried to squirm out of the thing’s embrace, but he couldn’t break free. Then the arms clubbed him hard and the whirlwind attack left him on the verge of consciousness. Soon, the ground came up to meet him and with it came darkness.

  Chapter Five

  Interim

  In his unconscious state, Paul was only dimly aware of the cold. Since it posed no threat to his constitution, his subconscious recognized it and filed it away under the title of not important to us.

  He’d been knocked out before. The experience was always the same—the flash of lights in front of his eyes, the world spinning as though it would never stop and the sudden descent into darkness. Perhaps others passed out more slowly, but in his case, unconsciousness always seemed to come at once, so maybe it was a blessing in disguise.

  When consciousness did come, it came with nausea, vertigo and a feeling of disassociation, as if his mind had taken a trip outside his body. However, as he lay in the cold, his subconscious didn’t allow him to think about waking up, not right away. Instead, it released a memory, and most of his memories were very unpleasant ones. He was in his first year at the orphanage.

  “Snowball fight!” Brother Max had sung out.

  Wintertime—cold and flu season—and Paul had just recovered from a bout of bronchitis. He’d never been strong, and any cold or virus that came along seemed to fall in love with him. Much as he’d longed for friendship, becoming an illness’s best buddy wasn’t on his to-do list.

  However, today he’d felt ready for some fun. The other guys had chosen sides and, as usual, Paul had been the last to be picked. Being the runt of the orphanage litter definitely had worked against him, but one thing he had in his favor was speed. He’d had no strength and hadn’t been able to fight his way out of a paper bag, but he’d been able to dodge and duck better than anyone.

  “The rules are simple,” Max had called out. The two groups had faced off against each other in a small park which lay near the orphanage. It had been empty then, save for stunted trees and lots of snow, and the teams had stamped their feet and shifted around, anxious to get things started. Max had stood on the sidelines, wearing a heavy coat, his breath coming out in puffs of steam. “You get hit, you’re out. No cheap shots, no throwing downstairs,” Brother Max had pointed at the space between his legs and everyone laughed, “and no head hunting. I mean it.”

  Rules given, both sides had faced off. Naturally, the first few volleys had come right at Paul, all aimed for his head. These guys had known how to throw, and they’d thrown with power and accuracy, but try as they might, they hadn’t been able to hit him. He’d heard the roars of his own team and that had given him confidence.

  “Keep trying,” he’d yelled, and he’d aimed a weak lob at a nearby target. Truth be known, Paul had had a weak throwing arm, incapable of breaking even a pane of glass, but this kid had been so close that it had been easy. The snowball had connected with a splat on the kid’s shoulder, and Max had waved him off the battlefield.

  “Get him!” the other team had cried.

  Paul had continued to shuck and jive and the opposition had never learned. They’d come in too close to throw and miss then had gotten picked off, one by one. He’d done it all without backup, and after the third kid had thrown and missed, he’d had an idea. Drawing another kid in close with a stutter-step, he’d lobbed his snowball high in the air. “Look out,” he’d cried, and had immediately backed off.

  Snowball held at the ready, the kid had smirked, but he’d glanced up, which gave Paul enough time to splatter him with a hastily made snowball, and he’d tossed it at the kid, the projectile spattering his chest.

  “You’re out,” Max had intoned, and the kid had left the field, muttering vicious words.

  In a sudden assist, his team’s leader, a fat kid named Scott, had yelled, “It’s our turn! He’s winning it for us, so get ’em!”

  A few minutes later, it had been all over. Max had called a halt to the proceedings and Paul had started to walk off, exulting in his first victory. As he’d trudged along, he’d heard someone say “Hey, punk!”

  Turning around, a snowball had hit him squarely in the right eye. It had been an ice-ball, and the impact had snapped his head back. He’d wondered who’d thrown it and why, and the only reason he’d been able to think of was that the kid’d had to be a sore loser. A moment later he’d felt the snow envelop him and he’d dimly heard Max’s voice say…

  ****

  “Hey, get up.”

  The voice—strong, yet feminine—came through a black veil and a second later, it came again, more insistent this time. “C’mon, boyfriend. Wake up!”

  Angela…

  Paul woke up, his head splitting from a massive fist-induced headache. “Ow,” he said. “That hurt.”

  His girlfriend stood in front of him and reached down to pull him to his feet. “Don’t move,” she said, and she started to carefully feel around his head. He winced when she touched a lump. “Yeah, you have a nice little hematoma behind your left ear. What hit you?”

  “A slug named Sluggo,” he said, feeling ashamed he’d gotten his butt kicked so easily. “What happened?”

  Her eyebrows arched. “You have to ask? You got knocked out. When those things attacked, I flew in to help. I landed and someone started shooting at me.”

  Confused by her answer, he sat up quickly. Bad idea, as his head spun, and he shook it in order to clear it, as he tried to recall the events from a short time ago. He’d heard no small arms fire. “I didn’t hear any guns. What were they using, silencers?”

  In answer, Angela pulled something from the folds of her cape and held it out. Approximately six inches long, it had a sharp tip and, touching it, it felt hard, like steel, only more so, if that were possible. “What I ran into shot this at me and a lot more of these things as well.” She took his hand. “C’mon. I’ll show you.”

  She led the way back to Big Bertha. The battle transport had a number of dents in the side, and one section had practically been caved in. The antenna had also been ripped out. No wonder the lines had gone dead.

  Sandstorm whipped up a sign. Are you okay?

  “I’ll live. I just won’t enjoy it,” Paul answered.

  I reconnoitered the area. Nothing’s out there. No bodies, no traces… It’s like they were never there, Sandstorm signed.

  “Well, something was out there,” Stander ground out between swear
words. He paced back and forth, exuding rage as he cursed out the creatures and promised revenge. The only other member of his elite team—Hawkins—stood near the door. He had a bloody bandage wrapped around his head, and he swayed on his feet before leaning against the side of the vehicle. Several body bags lay next to each other near the rear of Big Bertha.

  “You’ve been out for around twenty minutes,” Stander said, plumes of his breath making whitish curlicues in the air. “We found what was left of our men.” He ran his hand over his head in a quick move, as if trying to make sense of the senseless. “Damn it all to hell. I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to my commander and the boys in Washington, much less the families of these men.”

  “We got our asses kicked,” said Paul. “That’s what happened.”

  He stared at the bags, feeling mixed emotions about all this. Although the men had displayed a rotten attitude earlier on, still…this was no way to go. Death had come, and it left a most foul aftertaste in Paul’s mouth.

  Hawkins hung his head, openly weeping, and Stander paused a moment to wipe his eyes. “Yeah, we did. If it’s any compensation, we did get a prisoner, though.”

  “How’d you get a prisoner?”

  “I knocked her out,” Angela said with a smidge of satisfaction lacing every word. “She couldn’t fly, and that gave me my advantage.”

  Stander motioned with his arm and led the way around the back of Bertha. There, a figure lay trussed up, shackled and unmoving. Around five-three, it had a girl’s figure, but there the resemblance ended. Her face seemed human enough, although she had a snub nose with full lips and a high-domed forehead. Her hands were like paws, with tiny claws on the end, and her skin consisted of dark brown fur.

  What made her look different from the other mutants was her tail. Long and slender, it held a number of barbs on it, and her body had quills mixed in with the fur. She resembled a very cute, furry, but also very prickly denizen of North American forests. He didn’t want to say it, but Stander did. “Meet Ms. Porcupine. She’s our first prisoner. She won’t be the last.”