Mitch stopped abruptly, causing Laura to almost smack into him.
She glanced at him, confused. “Why’d you stop?”
“Shh!” Mitch said pointing to his ear. Laura and Noah both listened carefully.
Looking back, Noah saw that the car had already long disappeared in the limited visibility from all the dust in the air. When the meteor had hit, the bright sunny day had instantly turned into twilight. The sky wasn’t visible anymore as the whole area was covered in a thick cloud of powder. Unmistakably, something very large was heading their way fast . Noah couldn’t identify what it was by the sound. Mitch stepped past Noah, readying the bazooka.
“Both of you, get back.” He said waving to the side. He knelt down on one knee.
Noah and Laura exchanged glances again before hurrying further away until they could just barely see Mitch through the thick air. They crouched down as they waited and watched.
Speaking to Noah, Laura whispered. “Our mission is to get you to the base in one piece, so don’t try being a hero. You stay behind me.”
Noah nodded in response. He had no idea what they were up against, and he certainly had no recollection of how to use a gun. Even if they had given him one, which he doubted they would even consider, he probably wouldn’t have been a good shot. Laura held her rifle up to her shoulder, ready to fire as soon as she could find a target. As Noah was trying to focus on his breathing, in order to slow his heartbeat, the loud noise abruptly stopped.
There was complete silence. Both of them watched Mitch carefully, trying to listen for any movement beyond the shroud of dust. They couldn’t even see the front end of the bazooka, only Mitch’s back.
Suddenly, from out of nowhere, Mitch was impaled through the gut by a large black spike. He cried out a blood curdling scream and fired the bazooka. It missed its target, firing off far into the distance. Then the spike abruptly retracted, pulling Mitch with it, and he was gone. His screaming continued for a few brief moments before abruptly stopping.
Laura fiercely grabbed Noah’s arm, terror in her eyes. “Run.”
They both rose to their feet simultaneously, turning to run for their lives in the other direction. The loud noise started up again, indicating that their unknown assailant had begun the pursue. Laura initially had her hand on Noah’s shoulder to keep him in front, but he was much faster. Within seconds, she was several yards behind him. Had he always been this fast? He looked back to make sure she was following.
A large shadow towered over them. Noah was about to warn her, but suddenly another black spike came from twenty feet in the air and slammed Laura into the ground, impaling her through the chest. Looking up at him with a terrified expression, she reached out her hand, trying to speak. She mouthed the words ‘Help me’ before being rapidly dragged out of sight. Her hands clawed at the ground, but to no avail. Within seconds she was gone. Noah didn’t even have time to react.
Unable to do anything, he turned his head back in the direction he was running, only to stop dead in his tracks. The large shadow was already there, towering over him. The monster was at least two stories tall. As it moved closer, he could finally see what was hunting them.
It was a creature unlike anything he had seen before. Its massive black body resembled that of a giant mutated insect. It looked like a mixture between a praying mantis and a spider. Its immense lower body was supported by four massive legs, and Noah realized the black spikes were the tips of the upper arms.
Looking up at this twenty-foot tall monster, Noah felt panicked, having just witnessed Mitch and Laura being impaled by this creature. Had the monster eaten them? He turned to run away, only to realize there was still as shadow behind him too. He was cornered! There were two of these monsters!
“Shit, shit, shit, SHIT!” He felt overwhelmed. He was trapped. He was going to die, right here, right now, a horrible death. Was he hallucinating? Was he dreaming?
Wake up! Wake the hell up!
His skin felt like it was lighting on fire. His blood underneath giving the sensation that it was about to boil. The monsters came closer, and his blood boiled over.
Suddenly red caught Noah’s eye, prominent against a colorless scene. Crimson threads floated in the air directly in front of him, swaying as if to their own wind, growing upward towards the sky. He followed their trail downward, leading to…him.
They were coming from him .
Without warning, without his consent, a thick tendril of crimson shot straight out of Noah’s core, tearing through his shirt, straight into the massive black monster in front of him. Noah could feel himself inside the monster, spreading…growing. The monster began to cry an ear-piercing screech as tiny red dots appeared all over its giant body. It then abruptly grew silent .
After a brief pause, the crimson dots swirled in a circular motion, slicing through the gigantic body like a hot razorblade through warm butter. All at once, the red dots disappeared, and the tendril of blood retracted back into Noah’s core faster than it had appeared. A mountain of black rocks fell to the ground like a brick building caving in.
Noah’s mind immediately filled with his recent memories of the warehouse – all those dead men and that large pile of black pieces…of something. He had killed those men. He had killed that monster. He was a monster.
Noah had no control of what had just happened. The crimson threads had acted on their own accord, as if they obeyed the will of another.
A shriek behind him, from the other insect, was immediately followed by a spike impaling Noah through the back. It tore through his spine, slicing through his chest, piercing his lungs, ripping through his muscles and skin. He suddenly couldn’t feel his legs. He instinctively grabbed the spike protruding out of his chest as his feet left the ground.
The black thorn had sharp black barbs as long as fingers. Noah watched as blood crawled out of his chest, traveling towards the tip of the spike. The ground rapidly fell away as the monster lifted him twenty feet into the air. A fall from this height would kill anyone.
Noah couldn’t breathe, blood dripping from his mouth. He had the urge to cough, but was unable to. He could feel another vine of blood shooting out of his back, followed by a horrible ear-piercing shriek from behind him.
Then, silence .
In the distance, Noah could faintly hear helicopters far away. For the first time, since he had woken up in the warehouse, he felt cold.
Focusing on the spike between his hands, the blood from his chest abruptly sliced through the barbed thorn protruding out of him, turning it into thousands of harmless splinters.
All at once, the ground twenty feet away rushed towards his face.
Chapter 7: Control
Noah awoke with a start. A bright light blinded him for a brief moment. He couldn’t move. Something hard and cold was restraining him. His mouth was gagged, so he couldn’t talk.
Trying to get his bearings, he felt a sharp object piercing the crook of his arm. Turning his head to look, he could see a man wearing intense-looking body armor. Underneath the black suit, Noah saw that the man was also wearing a surgeon’s gown and mask. The surgeon was drawing his blood with the largest needle Noah had ever seen – it was as thick as a nail. Next to Noah’s head was a tray of broken syringes of various sizes. It appeared the surgeon had been having trouble getting a needle in his arm. However, now he was in the process of filling up more than twenty tubes of blood. An entire tray of empty tubes was waiting to be filled.
Noah’s arms, legs, and torso were restrained with thick metal braces attached to the surgery table he was laying on. The room was bright and all white, except for a massive wall-sized mirror to the side. There were other people in the room – soldiers also wearing intense body armor, with their guns ready .
Realizing he was conscious, a voice spoke over an intercom.
“You’re awake. Good.”
Noah obviously couldn’t respond, so he just waited for the man to continue speaking.
“We have Madis
on in the room with us.”
Noah looked over to the massive mirror, realizing it must be a one-way window.
“She’s safe and will continue to be safe as long as we don’t have any problems from you.” There was a brief pause. “However, if we do have problems from you, we won’t hesitate to execute her immediately.”
Fear filled Noah’s heart – not for himself, but for Madison. He couldn’t control what he was doing! If they did something to trigger it, then Madison was as good as dead. They likely had a soldier with a gun pointed at her head, ready to fire.
He knew she was probably terrified, having been ripped out of her everyday life only to be interrogated, and then to be forced to watch her best friend be experimented on. The man on the intercom continued speaking.
“We are going to be performing some procedures on you, but you shouldn’t be concerned. When we picked you up from the crash site, we found evidence that suggests nothing we do to you will be permanent.”
Noah suddenly remembered the barbed thorn that had impaled him. Looking down at his chest, he saw that he was wearing a hospital gown covering his wound. However, he could feel his legs again, and he didn’t feel like he had a huge gaping hole through his chest. In response to Noah looking down, the man on the intercom spoke again.
“Yes, it was obvious from your shirt that you had been seriously injured, but when we found you there wasn’t even a scar.”
The surgeon, who was still filling up tubes, chimed in then with a whisper. “Seven minutes.”
Noah glanced at him as he continued quietly. “It only took them seven minutes to reach you after they were called from the base. And in that time, you were mortally injured and completely recovered.”
Noah was certainly surprised to hear that he had recovered from that wound, but he also couldn’t believe that the attack from those creatures had taken less than seven minutes. It had felt like at least thirty minutes. He supposed it must be true that time appears to pass more slowly for those experiencing intense situations.
The man on the intercom continued speaking. “We had audio connection with the car that brought you here, so we heard everything you said. We know you supposedly can’t remember anything. And honestly, I believe you.”
Noah was briefly relieved someone believed him. He was glad he had taken the time to try to convince his now deceased escorts. Maybe all they wanted was to run some simple tests, and they were just taking all these precautions to prevent the previous massacres from happening again.
Just then, another surgeon he hadn’t noticed walked up to the table with a bone saw .
Shit! Noah tried to speak to warn them that he couldn’t control it, but he couldn’t say anything with the gag almost choking him. The material shoved into his mouth was held in place by a strap wrapped around his head.
The man on the intercom continued speaking. “Which means trying to interrogate you is a worthless endeavor. Instead, we will be attempting to determine what exactly you are.”
Noah struggled to try to push the gag out of his mouth with his tongue, to warn them that everyone in the room would die if they hurt him. But it was no use. He thrashed against his restraints, trying to talk.
The sinister voice continued. “Now, our procedures are going to be painful, so just remember that your friend’s safety depends on your compliance.”
The surgeon who had been drawing blood stepped back with a sympathetic look in his eye. He grabbed the tray of vials, full of Noah’s blood, and left the room via a door adjacent to the wall-sized mirror. A soldier next to the door opened it, and then shut it behind him. It appeared the first surgeon was finished doing his job. Now it was his partner’s turn. The bone saw abruptly turned on, a mechanical whirling noise filling the room. The sound was deafening as the surgeon hovered over Noah, bringing the saw down to his arm.
No, no, no, NO! Noah struggled frantically. Why wouldn’t they let him talk? Why wouldn’t they let him warn them? !
The bone saw then made contact with Noah’s forearm. At first, it didn’t really hurt. Noah looked down in surprise to see that the sharp saw was only scratching his skin. The surgeon noticed too.
Realizing the bone saw wasn’t cutting into Noah, the man placed all his weight onto it, forcing it downward. Excruciating pain shot up Noah’s arm, radiating into his shoulder, as the rotating blade began to slowly dig into his muscle, getting closer and closer to the bone.
NOOOO! Noah uncontrollably struggled against the pain. His skin felt like it was igniting again, bursting into flames, and his blood had the sensation of boiling over. Except now Noah knew what that sensation meant. His blood wasn’t boiling, nor was his skin on fire. It was something much worse. Looking down at his body, thin threads of crimson were floating in the air, rising right out of his hospital gown, moving higher and higher.
At first, the surgeon didn’t notice the thin red threads, but the soldiers in the room did. They all immediately became more attentive with their rifles.
“Wait!” The man on the intercom commanded to the surgeon. He had noticed too.
The surgeon looked up from his concentration, finally seeing the thin threads of crimson coming out of Noah’s body. They were growing thicker, turning into a hundred thin tendrils. In response, the surgeon began backing away from the table, but it was already too late.
Without warning, the tendrils took on a life of their own and shot in every direction. Gunshots filled the room as hundreds of bullets embedded themselves into Noah’s body. He felt several bullets hit his face, breaking the strap holding the gag in. They even entered his skull. He could feel several shards of metal lodge themselves into his brain…yet somehow he didn’t lose consciousness this time.
His consciousness was everywhere now – everywhere his blood was. The crimson vines coming out of his body rapidly sliced through everyone in the room, while other tendrils pierced through the thick glass wall without resistance.
Noah could see, without seeing, what was on the other side of the wall as his blood dismembered the people in the other room. Madison was in the room, like the unnamed man on the intercom had said. She was sitting next to a soldier who was firing his gun at the tendrils massacring everyone.
Noah was finally able to spit the gag from his mouth as he felt the bullets in his body being forced out from the quickly regenerating tissue. The hundreds of metal shards were clattering against the floor as if it were raining bullets. The sensation of rapid healing was surreal.
Suddenly a branch of blood in the other room shot off from another, piercing the man next to Madison, striking his chest and spreading throughout his body. Noah knew the blood wasn’t going to stop until everyone was dead. Madison was next. It was coming for her.
“Madison!” Noah yelled with all his might.
Noah felt, without thoughts, a foundational truth. If she dies, I die .
He couldn’t live with himself if she died, let alone by his own hands. Deep down he knew his blood wasn’t some foreign entity he couldn’t control. It was him. He was the monster. He just didn’t want to admit it – that he was killing these people. He was allowing his primal need to survive defend him, pretending like his conscious mind had no say.
In the very core of his entire being he knew it was true, yet the blood still made its advance. Just as he spoke again, he could feel another tendril of blood branch off, heading towards Madison.
“MADISON!” He screamed with every fiber of his being. This was his blood. This was his body. It would obey him . He was the blood. He was the monster.
It stopped. Inches from her face, it stopped.
Immediately, all the blood tendrils retracted back into Noah in less than a second. And then it was over. Everyone was dead, except Madison. For the first time since he had woken up in the warehouse, he truly felt his entire consciousness engulf every fiber of his being. It was as if his mind was everywhere inside him now, instead of just his brain. He was the blood, and the blood was him. In every cell, in
every atom, it was him.
The last of the bullets were pushed out of Noah’s body, ringing as they hit the floor. The thick metal braces had been sliced off by the tendrils like soft clay. They fell to the floor as he moved to sit up, clattering against the white tile. He held up his arm as he watched one of the last bullet holes rapidly heal. Like a time-lapse video showing a wound heal over the course of weeks, his wounds healed in seconds .
Noah suddenly felt extremely cold. He looked at the glass wall but couldn’t see inside through the tiny holes.
“Madison,” he whispered to himself. He needed to get to her. She was probably terrified out of her mind, having just witnessed a massacre that almost included her.
He slid off the table, immediately slipping in the blood on the floor and almost falling. He caught himself, but was unable to move as he tried to hold back the urge to vomit. The slippery fluid against his bare feet was warm. Despite his nausea, the warmth seemed to seep into his body, allowed him to gather his thoughts. He was disturbed by how comforting it was. After a second, he cautiously stepped through the blood towards the door adjacent to the mirror, being careful not to slip again.
The exit was already ajar from a soldier who had been trying to escape. His dismembered body blocked the doorway. Carefully, Noah used the doorframe to steady himself while he stepped over the corpse. In the hallway, he was glad to see no one alive .
A few more corpses lay in the hall near an open door about ten feet away. They were military personnel who had been watching from the room Madison was in. Noah knew they had tried to escape when his blood had pierced the glass, but it had followed them out the door. No one had survived.
His bare feet were silent against the cold floor as he quickly crept to the open door. Peering inside the room, Noah could finally see Madison with his own eyes. The entire space was splattered with blood, making it hard to tell if white or red was the dominate color in the room. The floor was littered with the dead. Madison was hunched over in her chair on the opposite side of the room as the viewing window. Her elbows were pressed tightly against her body, with her hands covering her face. Likewise, her knees were tight together, and her feet were crossed underneath her chair. She looked like she was just barely holding it together.
The Keras Genome Page 6