by P P Corcoran
When he's not using a handheld dosimeter to scan his baby boy for radiation, he is dutifully creating new stories and worlds. Corey works to continuously improve and share his knowledge of the craft by offering writing tips to fellow scribblers on his author website.
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www.castrumpress.com/authors/corey-truax
Dead Reckoning
By Anthony Regolino
“Bennett! I can’t move!” were the last words spoken by my Special Task Force partner. I turned around, pointed my pistol at his head, and fired.
I left his body there in the ventilation shaft of the alien vessel we had infiltrated. But only after first making sure that it was lifeless.
He had almost made it with me to our destination. Almost. Just ahead of me I could see the grating which should lead into the Prisoner of War detainment cell. I trudged onward, furiously shuffling on my worn elbows and knees, and cursing the fact that I couldn’t rise even to a crouch in this cramped shaft. Our layouts of the lair were correct. This was the cell I sought.
The POWs were lying slumped against the walls, sometimes on top of each other, motionless but not lifeless. I lay flattened atop the grating and found that it was possible for me to slip my arm through, at least up to the elbow. I knew that many beneath me could see my dangling appendage, while there would be those who would not suspect my presence. It did not matter. Their salvation would come. There—someone I recognized. A soldier from my previous unit. What was his name? Sachs, that was it! Hold on, Sachs, I’ll rescue you.
I retracted my arm and adjusted my laser for the job it had to do on the grating. Then I set to work disintegrating the metal with as narrow a steady beam as the weapon could produce. I hoped that I would not have to drop down into the cell, but a quick glance at all the prisoners assured me that it would not be necessary.
I readjusted the laser, dropped my arm through the widened opening, and proceeded to blast the brains out of everybody in the room.
When I was certain that no life existed in the cell beneath me, I looked again at the carnage that remained and turned the barrel of the gun upon myself.
#
“WHY ME?”
Is that what everyone would say if they were in my shoes?
I thought back to how it all began. The beginning of the end. In the war. And as I thought back to the war, I looked with bitter hatred on my brother man. The human race. A race of inhumans.
Take any other rational race and ask them what they would do if a strange new alien race should come along and introduce itself. Do you think their answer would be “Start a war with them”? I don’t.
At least I hope not. I hope that our race is the only one with so heartless an inclination, and I hope that all other life-forms stay clear of us. It’s too late for the Progellics. They have met mankind (mankind, ha! —as if man were kind) and have suffered for it. We took their bodies and used them for food, took their fluids and used them for drugs—powerful, hallucinatory drugs, not even for medicinal purposes.
Ah, but maybe I’m being too hard on mankind. The majority of the population didn’t know what the government and its military were doing to the Progellics. Some didn’t even know about our contact with them until the war started!
It had been going on for a year (quite a long time for wars these days) before I was drafted. The battlefield was the Arctic. The Progellics were reptilian, but they hail from a planet far colder than ours and to them the Arctic Circle was paradise. I don’t need to tell you how our ‘heroes’ felt, freezing their parkas off and struggling to maneuver on a ground that the Progellics’ webbed feet took to easily.
So, it was no wonder that our boys were being taken out left and right. And we just kept sending them more to kill. Were there any alternatives? Missiles? You forget, we were dealing with an advanced race. They had some kind of protective shield blanketing their entire setup. Even planes and helicopters would experience interference when approaching the force field and would be grounded, often taking casualties. We had to go at them at ground zero. Which fortunately was how they came at us. Their massive spaceships were apparently not for fighting purposes and constituted their headquarter base. Five of them, linked by docking chutes, looking eerily like a misplaced Pentagon building, anchored up there on the ice of the North Pole.
As far as weapon technology was concerned, we seemed to be evenly matched. Seemed to be. We had the typical, standard laser rifles and pistols, and they had handheld (or rather claw-clutched) projectile weapons. In that regard it looked like we had the better technology. (It would figure—wouldn’t it? —that the only technology we would excel in was in the weapons department!) However, better weapons or not, we still had trouble moving, breathing, standing, eating, ad infinitum, in a climate that the enemy felt at home in.
And I took my place in the ranks, just as all those before me. I took a projectile in the leg and fell to the ground amidst the snow-covered bodies that beat me to it. I squeezed my eyes shut against the searing pain, and in seconds I passed out.
#
When I regained consciousness, I underwent that understandable delirium that leads one to wonder where I was, how I had gotten there, and how much time had passed. Well it couldn’t have been that long, or I would have been covered by more snow than I was. All it took was one glimpse around to know where I was and why. The dead bodies told me all I needed to know. But for some reason there didn’t seem to be as many human bodies as there should be. And there were Progellic bodies not too far away. A lot closer than they were when I exited the battle. I concluded that they must have hit us suddenly during a body cleanup run. I wondered if they would try to retrieve their dead from the battlefield, or if that was only a human thing.
I moved slowly, not wanting to re-experience the shocking pain in my leg, but to my surprise I felt nothing. The cold must have numbed everything. In this temperature, the blood hardly even flows, which is convenient if blood loss is the only thing threatening to take your life. I stood and didn’t even wobble. I felt like casting aside the parka, since I didn’t feel the cold, but I figured that this was just a side-effect of lying in the numbing snow and ice and if I stripped naked I would not feel the cold but it would kill me just the same.
So, the question was: Could I make it to the nearest base without succumbing?
#
The winds were blowing fiercely, practically carrying me along, making my progress easier, till finally the gate stood before me, and behind it a very surprised guard. He approached and scrutinized me, shielding his eyes from the gale. His hood flew back from his head, and I pulled mine back so he could see me better.
“Are you in need of medical assistance?” He screamed, his voice sounding like a distant whisper in the wind, as he pulled a key ring from his pocket and fished through them for the right one.
“Yes!”
He admitted me and pointed out an enclosed encampment. Once inside, I shrugged off my parka and collapsed into the nearest chair. I rose again quickly as a medic approached me with a chart in one hand and a pen in the other. Before he could open his mouth, I was already providing my information. “Bennett! Private Roger Peter! Serial number A-62-F...” Had I lost him already? He was staring down at my body, a nervous expression on his face.
“Y-You don’t belong here,” he stammered.
“I don’t? Great, then send me home. I’ve had enough of this war anyway.” Typical grunt response, but one I felt wholeheartedly, nonetheless.
“No, I mean, in this emergency ward.” He was taking a few steps back, but I matched each with a step forward of my own.
“Whatta ya mean? I’m injured, right? Where else should I go, the kitchen? Bleed all over the rations?”
We were joined by an older man who wanted to help clear things up. He peered down at my body and his helpful expression disappeared, replaced by a look of annoyance. “Oh, you don’t belong here,” he said disgustedly. “Why didn’t you tell us you were dead
?”
That took a few moments to register. “Excuse me? Dead? Is that what you said?”
“Yes,” the older man said, “dead, killed on the battlefield. He walked past me and pointed out the window at another encampment. “You gotta go over there.”
“And then I’ll be in heaven or something?” I said, not sure what kind of joke this was.
“You wish,” the younger man replied with a snort.
“Now, Jeffrey,” the older one said in rebuke. “That’s no way to treat someone who gave his life defending our world. He turned back to me with a solemn expression on his face, as if in remorse for his previous attitude toward me. “Go there, son. It’s where you belong.” I had stooped to retrieve my parka, when he informed me that I wouldn’t need it anymore.
Not understanding, I trudged over to where I was told to go and found a guard at the entrance. The wind had died down for the moment, making it easier to travel and speak. The guard stared at me without any expression, and so I asked him, “Are you Saint Peter?”
“Who are you here to see?” He said in a predictable monotone.
“No one. I was told I was dead and had to come here.”
He then glanced down, and it was as if he was seeing me for the first time. “What are you doing out there?” He asked as he sprang forward to let me in. “You don’t belong out there.”
“So, I was told. I just wandered in from the battlefield.”
“Where you were killed.”
“No, where I was shot. But, as you see, I’m fine. I’m not even limping with the leg I was shot in.” Then I remembered how everyone looked down at my body first before presuming me to be dead. “And just how does everyone come to the conclusion that I’m dead by looking at me?”
“One of your tags was removed.”
I reached up, and sure enough only one dog tag dangled against my chest from the chain hanging around my neck. I thought back to the conditions I awoke to on the battlefield, and what I had perceived the situation to be prior to my regaining consciousness. “That doesn’t mean anything!” I exploded. “They were in the process of retrieving our bodies when they were suddenly hit by a wave of attacking Progellics. Lizard skin was everywhere! They didn’t get to check our bodies thoroughly. I wish I could get my hands on the bastard who did the half-assed job of checking me for life . . .” I thought of how my loved ones were already being informed of my alleged passing and the grief it would be putting them through, and all for nothing!
The guard lifted my tag, then turned and pressed a buzzer. “Mister Bennett, you are experiencing the shock that accompanies finding out that you are no longer alive. A trauma team will be here momentarily.”
“Private Bennett! My rank is private second class!”
“Mister Bennett, once you died you became a civilian again. You have no further obligation to the military. In fact, the military considers itself obliged to help you.
I could hear the rushing feet of the trauma team and the squeaky wheels of the hospital gurney that they ran alongside. I turned and bolted through the exit, apparently had someone out there waiting. He swept my feet from under me and I fell hard, face first, into the packed snow. And you know, it didn’t hurt at all.
#
As I was led around the grounds that were to be my new home, everything was explained to me carefully, twice, and to my eternal dismay. The Progellics may only have projectile weapons, but their ammo was unlike anything known to man. And if only it had stayed unknown to man. When the projectile enters the body it releases a poison into the bloodstream, a poison which kills the body but leaves the mind alive—preserved, in fact—so that the victim remains conscious, fully aware as the body rots and decays, a process which itself is slowed down for prolonged effect.
We rolled past a young soldier who’d been dead for a month. Beside him sat his wife, the young widow, trying to be strong and talking to him in a soothing voice that occasionally broke, followed by spells of silence. The soldier just stared ahead, seeming to all the world to be oblivious to her presence. But in his tortured mind there was no rest, no peace from the mental hell from which he could not escape.
You see, movement is the first to go. That’s why they were carting me around in a wheelchair. The rigor mortis sets in at different times for different people, depending on God knows what. Metabolism, point of bullet entry, extent of damage outside of poisoning. Age, hair color, who knows! For some, the stiffening is instantaneous; for others, it could take weeks. I would prove to be one of the lucky ones. However, as we passed the motionless stiffs, positioned in either sitting or lying poses depending on how they were when they lost the ability to move, I was convinced that my muscles were hardening right then and there. And fear gripped me. A fear unlike any I had ever known—and, facing reptilian aliens in a war we couldn’t win, I was no stranger to fear.
Each blank stare seemed to lock onto me, to try to give me some ominous message, to warn me of what I would soon be going through, even though I understood that none of them had even the ability to focus their vision.
I was lifted and placed on a bed. Sure, I could have just up and lay down on my own, but I was momentarily paralyzed by all the information I had to assimilate. And, I guess, I was trying to prepare myself for my impending immobility.
My ‘new home’ was a bed in a tent surrounded by other beds with corpses on them. Only, I was beginning to think of them as more than just bodies. I mean, there was an intelligence still at work in each one of them. Although they sure would make for lousy neighbors. I was left alone with them and told that a social worker would be with me shortly to discuss my visiting privileges. Visitors? Were they serious? Do they really think I would want anyone to see me like this—or rather, like those around me? And yet, I could imagine the terrible boredom, the intense tedium they were experiencing. Imagine sitting in a room with no one to talk to, staying up day and night, just praying for a change in scenery. Not moving, not doing anything pleasurable like eating or making love, just sitting and staring. Hoping for a fly to come into view for some entertainment—only you wouldn’t be able to focus on it or follow its movements. You could only pray that occasionally it or something else moves into your line of vision. With these as the conditions, would you want to live forever?
I peered over at the victims lying on either side of me (I didn’t want to stiffen up without ever knowing who was next to me; the curiosity would drive me mad!), then suddenly felt a wave of guilt overcome me. Sure, I could still do that, but what about them? I felt the heat of all the consciousnesses in the tent focusing on me, with envy, hatred. I didn’t want them to hate me. I wanted them to accept me. After all, I was one of them. I wanted to tell them this, stand up, move into everyone’s line of sight, introduce myself to them and assure them that in no time I would be just like them! Sick, huh? And I might have done it, too, if my social worker hadn’t suddenly leaned into view (must be a habit of theirs, or a precaution) and introduced herself.
My, was she pretty. I wondered if she’d give a dying man a last request, something to stay with me for the rest of eternity. Then I almost gagged at the thought of asking her to have sex with a dead body. And let’s face it, that’s exactly what mine was. I doubt I could even get it up for her. Did I say that movement is the first to go? My mistake. Feeling is. Any tactile sensation whatsoever.
“Hi, my name is Dorothy. It is my duty to inform you of all rights you retain after you have died. If you wish to have visitors, they must participate in our secrecy program . . .” Yeah, yeah. I got the gist of all this as they rolled me in. The government didn’t want the whole world to know about this horrible predicament they had gotten us all into. As she restated all this in a more formalized manner, all I thought about was her hair. Strawberry blonde, and looking as if she had just washed it, I would’ve given anything to be able to smell its freshness and guess which fruity scent her shampoo was.
“. . . which brings us to your right to end this all and simp
ly die. If you wish, you can waive this right and leave it up to your family to decide . . .” What was that?
“Wait a minute. Are you saying that I can die for good? Not go through this hell-on-earth?”
“As I was saying, you have the right to end this now, or, if you feel that you haven’t lived long enough, to set a date for the termination of your existence . . .”
“But how? I thought that the whole terribleness of this weapon was that you could not die.”
“We . . . believe—we are not certain—that destroying the brain will do the trick. You see, there is a difference between a body being dead and being brain dead. If I hooked up an EEG to any of these bodies around you, they would still exhibit brain activity. That’s how we know they’re still conscious. Nevertheless, somehow, even though the brain is made useless by the poison in that it can’t give or receive commands from the body, it is still active and alive. And putting a bullet through it or searing it with a laser kills it and puts an end to all mental activity, at least as far as we can tell from our machines. We can only hope that, for those we can’t help, the misery ends when the body eventually decays and the brain crumbles to dust with it.
“There are some who have volunteered themselves for such experimentation, and it’s something you should consider yourself, something to help give meaning to your death, by helping us learn more about this condition, so we can help assure others who have fallen victim to this horrible Progellic weapon . . .”
I could hear a sales pitch in the works and stopped her before she got her hopes up. She looked disappointed, but then re-assumed her cheery countenance to tell me about how my death could still be made fulfilling through visits from loved ones. Of course, they would not be allowed to take me home, since their secrecy program was still in effect. Although, if more and more victims ask for their families to be informed of their condition so that they could come and visit, keeping this from the general public will become impossible. But for now, a relatively small percentage had been requesting this, and the families had been so disturbed and emotionally distraught that they couldn’t bring themselves to tell anyone about it anyway and prefer to tell people that their spouse/child/parent was dead . . . which would be true, of course.