by Evan Currie
Ocean water below flash boiled as forty thousand pounds of thrust blew superheated air into the surface and the F35 clawed for the sky.
“They’re tracking you, Cans,” Bishop called, “Don’t make it easy on em!”
“What do you think I’m trying to do!?” She snarled, rolling the fighter to the left, then snapping straight again. “What the hell is it?”
“I don’t know!” Bishop responded. “Never seen anything like it. Now shut and keep dodging. Argos! Does anyone have a lock on the target?”
Elise could vaguely hear the others in the squadron responding in the negative, their voices growing more and more frustrated.
“Fine. I’ll do it by eye. Hold on, Cans, we’ve got this,” Bishop said, “Argo Four, starting my run.”
*****
Durin scowled as he craned his neck, trying to gage the range to the target that was visible through the white water crashing around it on the surface. It was spraying orange… something at Cans’ fighter, he didn’t know what the hell kind of weapon that was, and honestly didn’t much of a damn.
He re-ran the numbers through his head, trying to do ballistic calculations in the back of his mind while he was tracking his location and velocity. He reached out, hand off the throttle briefly, to shut off the alarms that were doing him no good at all, then made his bombs live.
“Argo Four,” He said as he leveled out at FL50, “Terminal run started. Weapons live, target in sight.”
Argonaut’s Three and Five dropped in about three hundred feet off each win.
“We’ve got you covered, Bish,” Argonaut Three, Jason ‘Hummer’ Gold said. “Go get em.”
“Roger that… Tracking clean… GBU-39s hot.” Bishop said, still doing math equations in his head as he talked. He barely flinched as the target started firing that orange shit in his direction. By the time the computer had the targeting solution up on his computer, he’d already had the math worked out such that he was leaning in the right direction.
“Stay on it, Bish, we got this,” Hummer said, easing ahead on one side as Argonaut Five matched him on the other.
“Argonaut Three… Guns. Guns. Guns.”
“Argonaut Five, Guns. Guns. Guns.”
The two fighters on either side opened up, sending 25mm rounds down range through their gun pods, plumes of water erupting into the air as the weapons struck around the target. Some might have hit as well, but Bishop was too busy to notice.
The intensity of fire moved away from him, tracking the two immediate threats, which gave Bishop the few extra seconds he needed.
“Argonaut Four, GBU Release!”
He thumbed the release tab and felt the fighter lurch upward as the thousand-pound bomb dropped away. He was climbing hard before the weapon dropped more than a few hundred feet, all three rolling and twisting as best they could manage as the fire tore up through the air they occupied.
Behind them a storm of fire exploded.
*****
Chapter 12
Glades
“Sir. Yes Sir. I understand… No, I don’t know…”
The Marines looked on with mixed amusement and trepidation as Sergeant Kirth grimaced as he spoke into the appropriated phone. After they’d shut down the streaming source, the Sergeant had used the phone to call in their survival, location, and the position of the downed chopper and pilots.
From what people could gather, there had been a Brigadier General apparently waiting on the call.
In Washington.
None of them were exactly envious of the Sarge’s position at that point, though they were more than willing to listen in for their own amusement while they were otherwise securing the area.
Ben, for his part, ignored it all. He was looking for signs in the dirt, broken branches, anything else that would point him in the right direction to finding the thing that caused all the carnage.
Sandra wasn’t paying attention either, though at first that had to do with her being more focused on getting her guts to stay where they belonged. Once she had turned back to a normal color and was breathing a bit easier, she made her way over to where Ben was scanning the dirt.
“What did this, really?” She asked.
“Scourge,” He said dully, “That’s what the troops call them, mostly, when we’re trying to be polite. The Brass have another name, several actually, but most of them are pretty incomprehensible.”
“Really? Like what?”
“You know much about Quantum Mechanics?” He asked, seemingly out of left field, leaving her blinking.
“A bit yeah,” She admitted, “I never told you what I was studying, did I?”
“I assumed it was something about the ecology of the everglades?”
“I’m minoring in climate science, so yeah, but that’s just to take advantage of all the time I spend out on the water here,” Sandra said, “I have a few dozen particle traps that use the water to slow high energy particles that reach the surface from space. So, I know a bit about quantum mechanics.”
“Huh, well that’s what they are,” He said.
“Huh?”
“They are Quantum Mechanics,” Ben told her.
“What? How can anything be Quantum Mechanics?”
Ben paused, kneeling for a moment to touch something, rubbing his fingers together a bit before he wiped them off on his fatigue pants.
“Caused by, I suppose would be more accurate.” He said absently, looking to the thick forest with intense eyes.
“You’re still not making any sense. How can any species be caused by a scientific theory?”
Ben shook his head. “They’re not a species.”
She was about to ask more, growing frustrated by the seemingly contradictory responses she was getting, but Sandra was cut off by the equally frustrated Marine as Kirth rejoined them.
“Well, the President apparently saw the video this damn thing was streaming,” Kirth swore under his breath as he held the phone like it was toxic waste.
Ben winced. “Ouch.”
“Yeah, you can say that again. He’s real interested in what you were saying about breeding by the way,” Kirth glared.
Ben winced again, this time with a lot more feeling.
“Ouch.” He repeated himself.
That was pretty much the last thing he wanted to deal with. Ben wracked his mind, trying to bring up any memories of protocol for dealing with pre-contact cultures.
There wasn’t really a lot, that stuff was always left to higher ranks than a mere Marine Corporal, and most of what he recalled usually boiled down to ‘don’t’. There wasn’t any real regulation that said he couldn’t, though some had been bandied around from time to time.
He knew he wasn’t authorized to do… well, basically anything. His authority wasn’t high enough to make deals or anything official. On the side he could exchange intelligence and other backdoor types of things though.
“Yeah, so how about you tell me what you know,” Kirth growled, “So I don’t have a four - star crawling up my ass for answers I don’t have?”
Ben sighed, “As I was telling Sandra, we call them the Scourge, but that’s not an official term. Officially, it’s some ancient Mandarin and Latin combination that I couldn’t pronounce even if I could remember it. No one cares. They’re just the scourge.”
“What the hell are they? Some kind of bio-warfare? Previously undiscovered species? Aliens?” Kirth asked, exasperated, “Help me out here.”
“None of the above,” Ben shook his head. “They’re not a species… or, more, they’re many species. Look, you ever hear of Quantum Immortality?”
Kirth looked at him as though he’d grown a second head, but Sandra nodded.
“Sure,” She nodded, “It’s a thought experiment. Published in… I want to say the eighties maybe? It pertains to consciousness as it’s linked to quantum mechanics. I don’t know of anyone who thinks it’s real though.”
“It’s plenty real.”
“That does
n’t make any logical sense,” Sandra complained. “Consciousness doesn’t work like that. Death isn’t a binary state.”
Kirth raised a hand. “Can someone help the Marine who needs a clue here?”
“The idea is that consciousness can only be somewhere that it can exist,” She said. “So if the circumstances change such that it can’t exist, it’ll jump to the closest location that it can exist in.”
Kirth crossed his eyes, groaning.
“I think I sprained my brain.”
“Simplest explanation,” Ben said. “No one dies. You just shift realities when this one doesn’t want you anymore. You ever start to go down the stairs and stop, feel like you almost fell?”
Kirth nodded, “Of course.”
“You did fall. You died. That happened in one reality… But consciousness is information, and information can’t be destroyed,” Ben said as he focused on the ground, walking a few steps away before kneeling again to examine something. “The many worlds interpretation is true, there’s… functionally infinite realities for us to jump to.”
Kirth looked at the big guy skeptically. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you think you’re from a different reality?”
“Different cluster, if you want to be specific.” Ben answered as he got back to his feet and looked again to the trees.
Kirth looked at Sandra, rolling his eyes, and circling his finger around his temple.
“They went into the trees here, heading East,” Ben said, nodding in the direction specified. “What’s that way?”
“Swamp. Lots and lots of swamp,” Sandra responded.
“We need to get moving, before this thing corrupts the entire local ecosphere.” Ben said firmly. He glanced back. “How far out is backup?”
“Hold your damn horses, space man,” Kirth growled. “We’re basically unarmed here, because I do not count our pistols, one shotgun, her rifle, and whatever the hell that is you’re carrying as proper gear. We’ll wait for backup, get re-equipped, and then go hunt down whatever the hell did this.”
“No time. It’s already spreading. This one is a feral,” Ben said. “We can clean this up, but we need to move now. If we don’t, you don’t want to know what they’ll do to the coastal cities when they come out of the swamp.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Kirth growled, hand dropping to the pistol on his hip.
Ben glanced back. “Sergeant, I don’t like to repeat myself, but unless you feel a strong need for iron in your diet, don’t even think about drawing that antique.”
“Hey!” Sandra snapped, stepping between them, “Do I seriously need to hose you two idiots down? Look around you. We’re standing in a damned pile of bodies that look like they belong in a horror movie! If you two don’t get your priorities in order, I’m betting there will be a lot more before this is done.”
Kirth looked torn, teeth bared in a snarl before he threw his hands up.
“Fine!” He growled, “You’re right. Whatever the hell did this, it’s nothing I’ve ever seen. Maybe it will spread, maybe it won’t, but I don’t see any reason to take the chance.”
He turned around to the waiting squad, who were all looking like they were ready to jump in if things got hot.
“Griss, Driscoll,” He ordered, making the pair jump to. “Get into the lodge there, see if there any more guns and find all the ammo you can.”
“You got it Sarge,” Driscoll said as the duo hopped to and bolted for the lodge.
“The rest of you, body detail,” He said. “Find something to cover em up, but grab any phones, batteries, whatever looks useful. We’re without resupply for a while, and we’re going to need to coordinate with higher.”
The rest nodded and split up, heading for the lodge first to grab blankets he expected.
“We don’t move until we’ve at least got some basic communication gear,” He said firmly. “Once we have phones and batteries, and whatever we can find here in the way of weapons, then we’ll go on this bug hunt of yours.”
Sandra spared the Sergeant a raised eyebrow and half a smile, “Really? Bug hunt?”
“I watch movies.”
Ben didn’t like it. He knew that the feral was on the move. With an entire complex ecosystem for it to feed on and breed in, seconds could count, but there was something to be said about having communications with the locals. Especially since there was no question that they’d have more resources, by far, than they could scrounge.
“Fine,” He nodded. “But we need to be fast.”
Kirth nodded, “Understood.”
“What did you mean, when you called it a ‘feral’?” Sandra asked softly.
He glanced at her, his face a neutral mask.
“No one is really sure, but there are ideas,” He said. “Some people think that ferals are consciousnesses that never quite made it to fully human levels of sentience, but were still enough to start jumping before they could die…”
“And others?”
“Others think that they were human, once, but lost their sanity after too many years of not being able to die,” Ben said softly. “Or maybe they’re aliens. Honestly, the eggheads have lots of ideas, but if they have any really solid answers, they never told us.”
“So how do you know that they’re… what, Immortal?” She asked.
Ben shrugged, making his way to the edge of the trees as he continued to examine the trace he was following.
“Dimensional shifts are trackable,” He said, pushing some branches aside as he leaned down to look into the forest. “Remote viewing is a thing too, so once you have the frequency dialed in, and a good starting location… well, it’s easy enough to track them backwards.”
Sandra felt like crossing her eyes as she tried to follow that.
“You can look into other dimensions? Seriously?”
“Well, I can’t,” He said. “Don’t have the tech here, but yeah it’s not even very difficult from what I understand of it.”
He trailed off, taking a knee as he dropped a hand to his sidearm. Sandra didn’t know much about fighting, but she recognized the tension cranking up and took a few steps back while leveling her Winchester.
After a moment he relaxed.
“Just a racoon,” He said, getting back to his feet. “a normal one.”
“Don’t freak me out like that,” She growled.
“Trust me, this is the least of how bad things will get.”
*****
Driscoll paused as he walked through the main room of the lodge, eyes on a room across from him.
“Hang on, just saw something,” He told Griss.
“Whatever. Just hurry up,” Griss said from where he was pulling a rifle off a wall rack after smashing the lock with his k-bar.
The ammo for it and the shotgun were similarly locked up, but not by anything that he couldn’t break his way through. In a few moments he had a couple boxes of shotgun shells and the same for the 30-06 he’d retrieved.
“Check it out!”
Griss looked over, scoffed as he saw Driscoll appear with a hunting bow in hand and a bunch of arrows slung in a quiver.
“Do you even know how to use that thing?” Griss demanded.
“Of course, go bow hunting every year,” Driscoll assured him. “Way better than a rifle. Doesn’t leave me with ringing ears, at least.”
Griss rolled his eyes, “Fine. Just don’t put an arrow in my ass.”
“Not cool, man,” Driscol scowled. “It was just the one time!”
“Tell that to Gavin.”
“he was fine!”
“You’re still persona non grata at that range, as I recall.”
“Fuck you.”
Griss grinned, “Come on, Sarge is waiting.”
*****
They were still massively under-armed by Kirth’s preference, but he figured it was about as good as they were going to get, until they got a resupply.
“Alright, fine, let’s go hunting,” He said once ev
eryone was gathered. Eyes turned to where Ben was standing near the edge of the trees, “What are we looking for?”
“The feral won’t be tracked easily,” Ben said, “However its… offspring, those will be a different story. We’ll track them like you would a wounded animal, look for clear trace. It won’t be subtle.”
“Ok, let’s get moving,” Kirth said, pushing aside some branches.
The group followed, but Ben held up Sandra.
“You should stay here,” He said, “This will be dangerous.”
She glared at him, “Right, I’m going to sit here with the rotting corpses. Like hell.”
“Take one of the cars and get out of here,” He urged, “The keys are around somewhere.”
She shook her head, “I’ve grown up in these wetlands, and spent the last three years of my life practically living here. You’re going to need my help, and I’m not letting anything destroy the glades if I have a say in it.”
Ben sighed, “Fine. Stay close, and… just be careful.”
*****
They moved through the thick growth in single file, following the trail that meandered close to the edge of the swamp. Griss took point to start, while a couple Marines walked drag, leaving the rest in the center of the formation.
Griss held up his fist, taking a knee after only a few minutes. Kirth crouched low and moved up close to him.
“What is it?” The Sergeant asked softly.
Griss gestured ahead, leaning back slightly so Kirth could see what he was seeing.
Kirth leaned in, tilting his head to see between the leaves, his eyes widening slightly as he saw into a well-lit clearing. There was something there, chewing on a gator from what he could see. He just didn’t know what the hell he was looking at.
He pointed to Ben, waving the big man up.
“What the hell is that thing?” He asked as Ben settled in beside him.
Ben took a moment, peering close, then grimaced.
“You’d rather not know,” He said, “But it has to die.”
“Is it the thing we’re after?”
“No,” Ben shook his head, “Just an infected revenant.”