In the same way, my hands are zip-tied behind my back, with my wrists pulled tight together. Almost instantly, I get a prickly feeling in my fingers as the blood supply is cut off.
“Too tight,” I yell, but if the Russian soldier understands me, he doesn’t care. He pushes me roughly to one side and ties up Pretzel, but Pretzel doesn’t complain. He’s distracted. He too sees it, just the flicker of a shadow moving through the smoke, hiding in the haze. Branches crack, breaking under the weight of the dark beast as it circles out wide, but the soldiers are focused solely on us.
One of the soldiers grabs Jana around the waist, hoisting her into the air. She screams as she’s dragged toward the edge of the cliff.
I react. “Leave her alone.”
Those words have barely left my lips when the wooden butt of a rifle strikes the side of my head, slamming it forward with more force than I’ve ever known. At first, I think I’ve been shot as the pain is so acute, but there was no deafening blast. My ear has been ripped open. Blood runs down my neck. I stagger, barely able to stand on the broken branches beneath my boots, on the verge of toppling forward, unable to halt my fall with my arms.
“Nooooooo,” Jana shouts, screaming at the top of her lungs. Her legs swing wildly as the soldier drags her toward the drop. Although her arms are pinned, she wrestles, shifting her weight, desperate to break free, but the soldier is far too big and strong.
From out of the mist behind them comes a chilling reply.
“Nooooooo,” resounds over the decimated trees, only this is no human voice. It’s far too deep and raw, rough and ill-defined, echoing around us. Even the Russians fall silent. Their constant jabber comes to a halt. The guttural cry demands obedience and the soldier drops Jana, slipping the AK-47 from his shoulder. He pulls back on the bolt, loading a round. I’m not sure what I heard. I’m not even sure it was a word, it was more mimicry than anything coherent. Smoke curls through the air, rising from smoldering trees, reducing our visibility.
Through the haze comes the sound of thunder. A dark shape looms on the edge of our vision, hidden by the smoke. The soldiers level their weapons at the creature charging in toward us. Branches snap and break, flying beneath the monster as it pounds at the jungle floor, and yet the soldiers hold their fire. They close ranks. It’s as though they’re spellbound, confused, bewildered, each waiting for the other to signal the counterattack. They’re afraid. I can almost smell it on them. They’re as unsure as any of us about what lies out there in the mist.
Rocks and branches are hurled through the air, pelting us like hail.
“ПОЖАР!” is yelled in a burst of anger.
In that instant, four machine-guns open up on full automatic, sending a hail of bullets into the smoky haze.
Over the insanity of the staccato burst, I hear Jana yelling, “Tiny, no!”
Jana’s on her knees, barely a foot from the edge of the cliff, with her hands strapped behind her back.
Bullets pepper the large male Silverback, but he will not be stopped, hurling thick branches like baseball bats swung carelessly aside, only these are on target, twirling as they rain down on the soldiers. Each one is the size and length of a beam of construction timber and is thrown with vehemence. The soldiers duck and weave, but one of the burning branches collects the large Russian with the big machine-gun and he’s knocked onto his back. He fires blindly into the air and then rakes the ground with bullets as his machine-gun topples to the ash and dirt.
I can’t stand by and do nothing. Without thinking, I charge, yelling, screaming. Like Tiny, I’m consumed with rage. It’s foolish, stupid, crazy. My arms are pinned behind my back, but in that moment, I understand the anger of the gorilla. How dare these brute beasts intrude upon our domain, destroying the jungle and all that we love.
One of the Russians turns to face me with his AK-47 out in front of him. There’s fear in his eyes. Bullets fly past me, catching my clothing, tearing at my skin, ripping through my flesh. Blood sprays out behind me, but I am unstoppable. I collide with him. The top of my head catches his chin, sending his head lashing backwards and he’s knocked to the edge of the cliff. He loses his grip on the rifle and scrambles to reach it, but I’m quicker, bringing my boot down on his hand, crushing his fingers against the rock.
Beside me, Tiny hurls a branch like a club, knocking over soldiers like toys—they’re action figures being smashed in a kid’s sand box. He’s incensed, baring his teeth and bellowing, commanding respect. One of the soldiers has a hand gun out and is on the ground, scrambling backwards, trying to get away from the silverback, firing repeatedly into his chest. Tiny grabs the gun, crushing the soldier’s fingers against the pistol grip, and with barely any effort, swats him, hurling him over the cliff and sending him flying easily twenty feet in the air. He screams, plummeting to his death.
The Russian in front of me scrambles to his feet, pulling out a knife. Blood drips from his lip. He waves the knife, keeping me at bay, unable to process that I’m no threat with my arms locked behind my back. I advance, stamping at the ground, and he retreats in line with Jana. She kicks at his knee and he buckles, desperately trying to keep his balance on the edge of the cliff. Having fallen forward on his knees, his chest is at waist height, allowing me to reach out with my right leg. I plant my boot firmly on his shoulder and shove. He tumbles backwards, yelling as he plunges down the cliff face, bouncing off the rocks.
As I turn, I catch sight of Tiny grabbing one of the soldiers by his shoulders, pulling his arms out wide. To my astonishment, Tiny tears them off, ripping the man’s sleeves apart and tearing the soldier’s arms away from his body. The gorilla flexes with his massive chest muscles, roaring in anger as he flings two severed limbs out into the smoking ruins. Dismembered arms catch in the smoldering branches, tumbling to the ash covering the jungle floor.
The soldier stands there in shock as blood pumps from his shoulders, squirting onto the trunk of a burnt tree, draining the life from him in a matter of seconds. The Russian sinks to his knees as deep red blood soaks his uniform. His eyes. I will never forget the look in his eyes. So full of disbelief. So wide. So white. So full of terror.
The last soldier crawls through the fallen trees, trying to escape, but Tiny isn’t done with the Russians. He’s badly hurt and clutching his chest, but he refuses to relent. Blood seeps from dozens of bullet wounds, but Tiny will have his revenge on those that destroyed his home. He cradles one arm, scrambling forward with the other, leaping over fallen trees, breaking branches and leaving bloodstains on the bark.
Tiny grabs the soldier by the back of his shirt, pulling him up from between the branches. He opens his gaping jaws wide, revealing massive canine teeth. His jaws close over the man’s skull. The Russian screams in terror, trying to push away from the gorilla, but in a single, swift motion, the fully-grown Silverback cracks the man’s head open like an overripe melon, crushing the soldier’s skull in his mouth. The Russian’s body convulses, spasming as deep red blood sprays out over the white ash lining the rocks.
Blood drips from the gorilla’s mouth, soaking his fur and covering his chest. With a sense of disgust, Tiny tosses the lifeless body to one side and sulks off, disappearing into the mist. I’m shocked. The soldier’s body rolls across the rocks, flopping like a rag doll. Legs and arms flay wide without any control. Witnessing such sheer violence leaves my heart racing, almost bursting through my chest.
Pretzel stands beside me agape, with his mouth wide and his jaw slack, stunned by the speed and ferocity of the gorilla. The soldiers were well trained and fully armed, and yet they never stood a chance—not that they would have given us one—but such brutal deaths are hard to process. Through the haze, we see the gorilla stagger, leaning momentarily on the severed trunk of a tree before limping on.
“Tiny,” Jana whispers, but the massive gorilla never looks back, disappearing into the haze.
Pretzel hobbles over to the other Russian bleeding out on the edge of the cliff and pulls a kn
ife from a pouch on his waist. For a moment, I think he’s going to plunge it into his heart, but he leaves the soldier staring up at the sky as his life slowly fades. Two severed arms lie discarded like trash, tangled in nearby branches.
“You okay? Everybody okay?” Garcia asks as the silence settles around us. He heard, but never saw what happened, which must have been terrifying.
“We’re okay. We’re all good,” I say as Pretzel cuts the plastic tie behind Jana’s back. He cuts mine and a rush of blood reaches my fingers, bringing with it a sense of relief. It’s the look on Jana’s face though that alarms me. I follow her gaze and see a bloody mush of pulp and cloth where my shoulder should be. I’m surprised by the lack of pain. I feel as though I’m fine, but I can’t raise my left arm. Regardless of what I try, it just hangs there limp. Blood drips from my fingers.
Pretzel sits me on a rock.
“It was the gorilla, right? The one from the clearing?” Garcia asks, having pieced together what happened from the shooting and screaming and yelling.
“Yes,” Jana says. “They’re dead. All of them.”
“Take it easy, kid. You did well. You were great,” Pretzel says to me “Don’t you worry about a thing. We’re going to get you out of here. Okay?”
“Okay?” I say, feeling dizzy. The world is but a dream. I feel light, as though I’m full of helium. With a slight nudge, I could float away on a breeze.
Garcia speaks with deliberation. “How bad?”
Pretzel rummages around in one of the soldier’s packs. “Shoulder. Took some of the bone. Part of the clavicle, possibly the scapula. Can’t tell. It’s a bit of a mess.”
Jana crouches in front of me, holding my good hand. “It’s going to be okay.”
I get the distinct feeling everyone’s telling me it’s going to be okay because it’s not.
Pretzel pulls a small package out of one of the Russian packs dropped by the edge of the cliff. “I’ve found some kind of first aid kit.”
“Good,” Garcia says. “Look for a large, wide bandage, but not one sealed in thin plastic. Look for something in foil or really thick, durable plastic.”
“Got it, but why?” Pretzel replies, looking at the Cyrillic letters on the packaging.
“These guys will be carrying major trauma kits. As none of us can read Russian, anything that’s in a heavy protective seal probably has blood clotting agents, contact analgesics, stuff like that. Use that first. Then put regular bandages on the wound to hold them in place. Pressure. You need lots of pressure to stop the bleeding.”
“Ah.”
Pretzel tears open the packaging.
Garcia asks, “Is the shoulder socket intact?”
“Yes,” Pretzel replies. “Why?”
“The main artery runs beneath that. So long as that’s intact, there shouldn’t be any arterial bleeding. If the humerus is broken, the bone leading down to his elbow, it could still sever an artery just by moving around so check for any breaks.”
Given how much of a mess my arm is, I’m not sure Pretzel knows how to determine that, but he runs his hands down my tricep and bicep, squeezing and flexing. Oh, there it is. Pain. I grimace.
“It’s good. The bullet clipped the top of his shoulder.” Pretzel tears open the Russian bandage.
“Focus on stopping the bleeding. Look for any fragments of broken bone, anything that could grate with movement and cause more damage.”
I’m not sure what Pretzel does as Jana is stern, saying, “Don’t look. Look at me. Keep your eyes on me.” I nod. She’s right. I really don’t want to know.
“Where are the Russians?” Garcia asks as Pretzel pokes around inside what’s left of my shoulder with tweezers. “Where are their bodies?”
It’s a strange request. Jana answers.
“There are only two left. The others fell.”
“Or flew,” Pretzel says, “Depending on which way you look at it.”
“Good. Good. Listen, those soldiers are in combat gear, right? They’re going to be carrying Fentanyl. It’s a drug. A painkiller. It’ll be close, really handy, something they can grab quickly in a firefight. I need you to search their bodies for it.”
Jana looks at me in horror. Petty Officer Garcia has no idea. One body has been decapitated, the other dismembered. Blood soaks into the rocks, spreading out around the Russian corpses, staining the ground a dark, ruddy brown.
“I’ll do it,” Pretzel says, taking Jana’s right hand and placing it on top of the bandage on my shoulder. “Keep pressure here.”
She nods and Pretzel makes his way over the fallen branches, past the empty shell casings littering the ground, over to the soldier without any arms.
“What am I looking for?” He’s standing at the feet of the soldier, looking down at the blood splattered rock.
“Fentanyl is administered orally. Medics call it a lollipop but it looks like a cheek swab, you know, the kind you scrape against the inside of your mouth to get a DNA sample.”
Pretzel crouches beside the body. Blood, piss and feces seep onto the ground.
“Where am I likely to find it?”
“It’ll be somewhere easy to reach, like on a waist pouch or in a jacket pocket. Look for something like a small personal injury kit.”
Pretzel tears open a velcro pack, revealing bandages, scissors and an array of tubes carefully aligned for easy access. “Got it.”
“Good. Good. How many are there?”
“Ah, only one.” Pretzel makes his way to the other soldier. With his boot, he rolls the headless body over and retrieves another kit. “And one more over here.”
As Pretzel hobbles back to us, Garcia speaks to me, saying, “Listen, these things are strong. Damn strong. Just suck on it. Don’t bite it. Don’t swallow it. This stuff is designed to be slow release. Stick it up between your teeth and the inside of your cheek.”
He holds out his hand and Pretzel places one of the Fentanyl sticks in his palm. Instead of giving it to me, Garcia unscrews the cap and sticks it in his own mouth before holding out his hand again. Seems I get the second stick.
Oh, wow. Within seconds of it resting in my mouth I feel warmth running through my body. My fingers tingle. Just the slightest movement leaves my forehead reeling.
“I—I feel great.”
“Well, you’re not. It’s an illusion,” Pretzel replies, using tape and a compression bandage to hold a thick gauze pad in place over the wound. He finds a sling in the first aid kit and folds it in triangles, positioning it gently beneath my arm before resting my hand in it. To my surprise, he tightens the knot around my neck, raising my hand so it sits up near my other shoulder, with my left elbow pointing down. I’m expecting the traditional arm-resting-horizontally approach. I must look confused as he clarifies.
“Takes pressure off the shoulder.”
To me, it seems unwarranted. I feel as though I could run for miles. Garcia has a big grin on his face. Given he can’t see me, he still knows exactly where I am.
“Good, huh?” he says, holding up his medical lollipop like a trophy.
“Oh, yeah.”
Jana helps me to my feet. Pretzel limps between discarded packs, looking for anything else that could be useful. He picks up a rifle, stares at it for a moment, and tosses it away like garbage, but he finds two canteens with water and some ration bars. Water never tasted so good. The Russian version of a granola bar is sickly sweet and as tough as an old boot, but I’m not complaining.
“What’s the plan?” Garcia asks. Plans are always needed, apparently.
“I don’t know,” Pretzel says, hobbling along the edge of the cliff with Garcia walking behind him, holding onto his shoulder. We follow the rocks to avoid the debris scattered through the jungle. “We’re not going far. Not like this. We need medical attention. Jana’s the only one capable of covering any reasonable distance. The rest of us will barely make it a mile.”
“We’re not splitting up,” I say. Jana is quiet. I’m not sure whether she
agrees or not. She has a chance of getting out of here. Who am I to hold her back? And yet it feels like defeat to admit that she should go. Neither of the others say anything in response to my comment.
Garcia says, “We should make for base camp. We might find a radio or a flare gun. Anything that survived the firestorm could help.”
As far as plans go, it’s flimsy. I’m not convinced. I don’t see any sense in moving closer to the alien craft, besides, Pretzel’s right about our pace. We’ve only walked a couple of hundred yards, constantly stopping to negotiate fallen trees and branches, and hobbling along with our injuries.
The heat saps my strength. Yards feel like miles. I watch the fall of my boots, picking my steps as we follow the cliff, trying to avoid the worst of the debris. Garcia is just ahead of me. Ash kicks up from beneath his boots, slowly settling in the soft breeze.
“Tiny,” Jana says, and we turn to see the male Silverback huddled in the crook of a branch half torn from a blackened, fallen tree. He has his arms out wide on either side of him like a boxer resting on the ropes. Jana steps toward him and he growls, baring teeth still stained with the blood of a Russian soldier. Pretzel comes to a halt, having almost walked past Tiny without realizing he was there. There’s trepidation. Tiny snarls, wanting us to keep our distance.
“Please.” Jana holds out her hands as though she were trying to soothe a horse, inching closer to the injured gorilla.
Pretzel whispers. “He’s an animal. A wild animal. One that’s hurt. We should keep moving.”
“No,” Jana replies, ignoring Pretzel and edging closer, stepping over broken branches with care. Tiny snorts, clearing his nostrils.
“He’s dying,” she says.
“Jana,” I say, not feeling comfortable this close to the massive ape. “We should leave him.”
“No one should die alone.”
Twigs snap beneath her boots, rousing the semi-conscious gorilla, causing his eyelids to flicker and his head to roll. He flexes, as though he’s ready to launch himself at us.
3zekiel (First Contact) Page 15