by Susan Kelley
Hector started with his camera, taking a vid of the body, the shelter and the rough camp. It appeared as if the monstrous man had lived in the same spot for quite a while.
Mak took out his light and adjusted its focus so it shone over the entire camp. Then he tore back some of the branches around the hovel’s door. It rose high enough in the center for them to stand though the roof sloped downward sharply to the sides.
A pile of branches covered by dirty lengths of cloth, perhaps once blankets, took up most of the area to the left of the door. Pine needles covered the floor and provided a soft carpet although only a small area wasn’t covered by…stuff. Bit and pieces of equipment, most tarnished or bent out of shape.
Hector swung the camera around, getting it on record before they moved anything. An odor of rotting meat, human waste and sweat filled the entire space.
If the smell bothered Mak he gave no sign. After Hector finished his vid, Mak used his foot to nudge aside some of the junk. A few socks, old boots and scraps of clothing nestled amongst the tangled mess. It looked like an old trash heap. Links of chain, a door handle and thick pieces of safety glass mixed with shards of bone. Mak moved along the wall, using his foot to spread out the mess while Hector caught it with more vid.
Something snagged Mak’s attention. He knelt and picked something up. He handed it to Molly and then dug further into the heap, pushing pieces aside with more care.
Molly took a few steps to the entrance where the light would fall on the object Mak had given her. The smooth metal cylinder, about the size of the last joint on her little finger, had numbers engraved on it. “What is this?”
Mak joined her, offering a handful of the cylinders. “Identity capsules. They’re inserted into a soldier’s body so it can be identified if his remains are too mutilated to be known by other markers.”
Molly counted. “Twenty-three. How did they get here?”
Mak looked at the body only a step away. “See if you can find one in him. I’m going to look around.”
Molly and Hector went to work after storing the identity capsules in a sterile bag. The horrible body odor clinging to the body added an element of disgust to the grim job of gathering samples.
The skull was think, the neck short, as Mak had said. Hector used a small drill to work his way through the cranium and take a brain sample. A clotted wound on the thing’s forehead marked where the pistol shot had ricocheted off the bone. Molly tried to think of it as a man despite its grotesque body. He was even bigger and with heavier muscles than the man they’d seen in the vid at the start of the mission. His hair, though matted with dirt, appeared to have been chopped short recently. The dead eye held no emotions but surely it had once upon a time. Molly looked back at the crude shelter and thought of those piles of junk. An attempt to hold on to something from the past, a childish interest in shining things, or something more disturbing?
The armored vest protecting the man’s torso gave way reluctantly. Hector pried open enough dirt crusted hooks to pull the front apart. They did measurements and then used long needles to take samples of heart muscle, stomach contents and liver tissue. The dead man also wore thin, holey pants, so filthy the color was indeterminable. Most of his long, yellowed toenails were cracked and torn. He’d chewed or ripped his fingernails down to his fingertips.
Hector used a portable imaging device to scan the body. A few bones showed the thickening indicative of old breaks. Two pistol rounds nestled in the thick leg muscles where they apparently hadn’t slowed him much. They found the identity capsule in the thick muscles capping his right arm. Hector took on the task of digging it out.
Molly jumped in alarm when Mak stepped out of the shadows behind Hector. She hadn’t realized how tense being around the dead man made her.
Mak lifted his eyebrow. “Are you done here, doctors?”
Hector dropped the metal tube in a bag and stowed it away. “We are.”
“Bring your stuff and come with me.” Mak retrieved his light and led them onto a faint trail behind the shelter.
Molly shrugged when Hector gave her a questioning look. They followed the silent marine for about a hundred yards. Mak stepped aside and gestured them forward. “You might want some vid of this.”
“Holy hell,” Hector muttered as he dropped his backpack and dug for his camera.
Molly couldn’t speak at all. Bones lay in a jumble. Human bones. Skulls, long bones, rib cages and broken bits not so easily named. Three bodies with some flesh still attached stank to one side. The missing villagers. Her feet dragged as she approached them, but Mak stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“You don’t have to look at them, Molly. They died of blood loss.”
She tugged but he didn’t let her go. “What don’t you want me to see, Mak?”
“This.” Hector held up a femur, the long thighbone. “There are teeth marks on this.”
Molly looked around at the thick woods surrounding them. “There are wild animals around here?” Perhaps that was why this place raised the shivers along her spine.
“They’re human bites.” Mak applied more force and pulled her away from the dead. “He fed on them.”
Bile rose in the back of her throat. She had seen many terrible things as a scientist and doctor, but cannibalism hadn’t been heard of in centuries. “All these people?”
“The old bones are from the other soldiers who were experimented on.” Mak led her to the other side of the stack. “Get some samples if you want.” He walked away into the forest.
Molly looked across the way at the villagers, trying to remember who they’d been. If she and her group hadn’t come to investigate the lab, would the monster have eventually eaten them all?
Hector worked on taking scrapings from various bones, picking the skulls so they would know they were from different individuals. The craniums showed the same distortions as the dead one back in the clearing. A few of the skulls and many of the other bones showed severe fractures, some horrid enough to have caused death.
Reluctant to dig through the morbid pile, Molly told Hector to stop when they’d collected from thirteen different skulls. Noise from the pathway announced Mak’s return. He dragged the dead man by his feet. Mak’s leg muscles bulged with each step as he pulled the heavy load. When he neared the pile of bones, he dropped the feet and walked around to the head.
“Grab his feet, Dr. Loren, and help me lift him onto the rest.”
Hector handed the vid to Molly and scurried to obey. Both men grunted a bit as they picked up the load and flung him on top of the bones. Mak bent down and rubbed his hands in the dirt as if to clean them.
Molly dug in a side pocket of her pack and took out the sterilization spray. “Hold out your hands.”
Mak and Hector both allowed her to spray a liberal amount of the solution onto their hands. Mak rubbed his together, over and over, as if the filth went deeper than his skin.
After Hector and Molly shouldered their packs again, Mak pulled a small ball out of a pocket on his weapons belt. “Start back to the campground.”
Hector led and set a pace betraying his desire to leave the graveyard behind as much as Molly did. She heard a whoosh of sound behind them and soon the scent of smoke caught up to them. They found the camp, the hovel now less a curiosity than the scene of horrific crimes.
Mak entered the camp as soundlessly as usual. “Are we done here?”
Molly nodded, too many terrible thoughts running through her head to think of anything else to do. But after Mak led them half a mile through the forest, one thought separated itself from the fog of horror. “We can’t tell the villagers that their friends and family were eaten.”
Mak paused but then nodded without turning. “I understand.”
“How should we say they died?” Hector asked.
Mak answered. “Tell them he broke their necks, quick and painless.”
“Were their necks broken?” Hector asked.
Molly didn’t want to know but
Mak answered before she could stop him. “They died of blood loss due to being eaten alive.”
She turned aside and threw up. Hector patted her back until her stomach stopped cramping. When she straightened up Mak watched from a few steps away.
“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you either.” Mak looked away. “I’m not accustomed to lying.”
“It’s fine. I would have wanted to know.” Molly forced a smile. “But it would have been better to know when we were a few thousand miles away from here.”
“How would that be better?” Mak started off again. “I’ll never be able to stop knowing it.”
“Me either,” Hector agreed. “I don’t even want to sleep tonight. What kind of nightmares am I going to have?”
Molly hadn’t any words of comfort, dreading what her subconscious might create for her dreams. Mak’s next words added a layer of sadness over the horror.
“You’ll have the kind of nightmares I’ve had since my earliest memories, Dr. Loren. Some things once seen dirty a spot on your soul that can never be cleansed.”
Chapter Nine
Mak pulled on a form-fitting deep dark blue uniform suitable for onboard wearing. He’d showered twice and stood under the heat laps to dry. Yet he still felt unclean. They’d left Dewell behind twenty-four hours ago, but the image of the bone pile and the half-eaten villagers remained as clear in his mind as when he’d first seen them.
He’d witnessed many terrible things in his years as a Recon Marine, but nothing had disturbed him quite so much. He’d pitied the poor, disfigured man with his dirty rags and piles of junk. His initial guess had been the monster visited the village out of loneliness, confused about why the lab had shut down. Perhaps looking for his brothers or his trainers.
A chirp alerted him to an incoming message. “Hell.” Mak looked at his bunk with longing. He hadn’t slept for almost two days except for a two hour nap in the pilot’s seat.
“Mak, we have a preliminary report ready.” Even through the radio Molly’s fatigue could be heard. “Please join us in the lab.”
“I’m on my way.” Mak pulled his boots out of the cleaner. His body armor hung in there also. All his things smelled fresh as a sunny day though his imagination remembered only the stench of putrid flesh. He put his belt on, leaving most of the attachments on his weapons shelf. He thought about checking in with Pender on the bridge but procrastination wasn’t the marine way.
The three doctors waited for him at their small table with their AI tablets lit up and working with graphs and figures scrolling on the screens. Dr. Loren and Molly appeared pale beneath the lab’s bright lighting. They looked up at him with the haunted eyes of young soldiers after their first bloody battle. Dr. Shear gave Mak a grim nod and started the report as he settled into a chair.
“All the grotesque body typing found in this sample was done during the teenage years. They inserted genetic material from other species to produce thick bones and muscles efficiently. It appears some further gene manipulation resulted in the unusual height. Other radical changes in the DNA might have resulted from excessive amounts of synthetic hormones administered, again during the teen years.”
As with their other reports, one doctor took up the report smoothly from another. Dr. Loren tapped away at his AI. “I’ve uploaded the identity capsule data along with samples of DNA from the dead one and the skulls. We’ll send it to General Drant as soon as we get in range. Since these…men were in the lab for years, we believe it was set up concurrent to the space lab. They ran multiple programs with each trying different approaches.”
Molly cleared her throat. “We’re afraid another lab was started, combining the two methods. It appears the one you killed had been starving and perhaps that’s why it turned to cannibalism. The brain tissue and muscle tissue both showed signs of degeneration due to a poor diet. Hector and I found signs of experimentation on the immune system of the lab subjects.”
Mak held up a hand. He didn’t care what diseases the man might have been vaccinated against. “Were those men abandoned here? I don’t understand how they ended up out in the woods and the villagers didn’t know about them until recently.”
The doctors shrugged with only Molly offering a guess. “The bones had been there for a while. On the body scan we found old wounds on the one you shot. The scientists may have killed them and dumped the bodies, but one wasn’t quite dead. The bite marks on the bones were old. Perhaps he was hurt and ate his dead mates until he recovered. Though he had a normal-sized brain, we don’t know how much reasoning he did. But he must have understood the people running the lab intended to kill him. He might have run away or at least kept his distance until hunger drove him back to his place of origin.”
“Some of the people involved in this are out there.” Mak wondered if a person capable of this would look evil or could they hide among the unknowing population? Enemies were harder to spot in civilian society.
“Maybe we’ll catch up to them.” Dr. Loren sounded frightened. “They might still be on this next base on Arid Four.”
Mak stood up, having heard enough. “If we do, doctor, you’ll get to meet the real monsters.”
****
Molly caught up to Mak as he came out of the crew quarters where Andy rested his broken ribs. It was the first time she’d cornered him alone since they’d left New Venus. “Mak, wait. I need to talk with you.”
He paused at the door to his room. “Was there something you forgot in your report? I can read it later.”
“No, but I….”
“Then I have to get some sleep. We’ll be in range to contact the general in five hours.” He opened his door but Molly slipped in before he closed it.
She pushed it shut and leaned against it. His room was small, built for a single person, but with Mak staring at her the walls seemed even closer. He didn’t look happy. She took his hand, lacing her fingers through his. “Dewell upset us all, Mak.”
He disengaged his hand and sat down on his cot. After pulling his boots off Mak looked up at her. “Recon Marines don’t get upset. I need some sleep.”
She sat beside him on the cot. Except for his boots sitting near his feet, the room looked as if no one occupied it. Spartan even by military standards. “So if Recon Marines don’t get upset, what do you call your reaction to what we found?”
Mak pressed his lips together as if he didn’t intend to answer, drawing Molly’s attention to his mouth. “I was disgusted the same as you.”
“Not the same as me. None of this is the same for you as for me.”
He blinked once and then again. With a sigh, the tension leaked from his body though his posture remained as alert and upright as always. “He spoke to me.”
“What?” She knew whom he meant, but she couldn’t quite comprehend it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shook his head. “It distracted me when it spoke. My mistake got the corporal hurt. He could have been killed.”
“What did it say?” Molly noticed they tended to refer to the monster as an it rather than he since they’d discovered its terrible secret.
“One word. Who? I think it recognized that I was military. Maybe my uniform or the weapons wakened some memory. I should have shot it.”
She rubbed his back, offering comfort as she might to a fearful patient. “No, you did the right thing. If we could have communicated with it we might have learned a lot. Andy told me his injury was his fault because he left his post.”
“After what we discovered, I don’t think we wanted to hear anything it had to say.”
“We might have learned what led it to that. We could have learned what cognitive abilities it had, what degree of socialization.”
His lips quirked. “Socialization? It lived alone in the wood and sought out other people as a source of food.”
She surprised herself by laughing. “I guess we can make pretty accurate assumptions from that.”
“I guess what bothers me is that language is a
building block of civilization.”
“So marines get bothered not upset?”
His lips curved again. “Questions I don’t know the answer to bother me.”
She couldn’t resist his closeness. Rising up a little she pressed her lips to his, but he pulled back.
“The general gave me strict orders regarding interactions with you.” He started to stand but she took his arm and urged him to stay seated.
“Do you know how old I am?”
“Someone told me women consider it impolite to know their age.”
“It’s impolite to ask. I’m thirty-three.”
“I know.”
“So you thought it was impolite of you to know my age so you lied about knowing it?”
“I didn’t lie, I just didn’t inform you that I knew.”
“How did you know?”
“I looked up your bio.”
“When?”
Mak’s face darkened. “After I met you?”
Warmth spread through her. “Why?”
He stood up, shaking her hand off his arm. “The general gave me orders, Molly. No personal interaction between us.”
She stayed seated on the bed. “I suppose you read my educational history. I’ve been a practicing physician since I was sixteen and have earned three more degrees since then.”
“Your intelligence quotient is in the top one half of one percent of the human race.”
“Yes, but that wasn’t my point. I worked in a hospital from the time I was sixteen, living on my own away from my father. He may be the general to you and the supreme commander overseeing this mission, but as my father he has no say in my behavior. Nor can he order you to stay away from me because I’m his daughter.” Molly had always been blessed with patience, and she needed it now as Mak stared at her. Deep blue glinted in his eyes as the emotions never heard in his voice crawled behind his gaze. She was accustomed to men, especially army officers, making quick snap decisions in action and conversation. Mak acted quickly in hostile situations but gave each of his words thought.
“I think he can order me to stay away from you.”