Max continued to fire, seeing some of his shots hit home. One tentacle shot forward and wrapped around Harlow’s right thigh, the end of it cracking whip-like against her bare skin, its fangs driving in deep, drawing blood. Another of the tentacles wrapped around her torso, squeezing her body tight as a third tooth filled tentacle came in between her legs and penetrated her in the most gruesome fashion, its mouth open as it slid into her. In twenty-plus years of combat, Max had never heard a scream to match Ms. Harlow’s. Her eyes bugged, and Max heard the blood and viscera gush forth from her nether regions onto the floor as the creature worked the tentacle ever further into her body. Another followed its path, stretching her wide and then lifting her up like a grisly hand puppet, smashing her body into the wall. Her screams turned into choked and stifled entreaties for help as the creature dragged her toward its mouth. A gout of blood vomited forth from her lips, followed by the tip of a tentacle.
Max almost couldn’t fathom it. Impaled straight through. He’d never before witnessed such a disgusting display of human mutilation. Incredibly, Harlow continued to struggle, though her panicked efforts grew feebler as the creature dragged her ever closer.
Sugar moved up beside Max and opened fire with his machine gun. Max found control of his aim and opened up again. The beast retreated rapidly, sucking up Ms. Harlow as it went. She was thigh-deep in the creature’s maw, dead, killed either by the beast or friendly fire.
Perhaps seeking more speed for its retreat, the beast sprouted a dozen short and scaly legs. It kept its circular mouth and tentacles and continued to devour Ms. Harlow as it fled. Max expended his ammo and reached for a second hundred-round drum magazine. The beast, already thirty feet down the hallway, would be gone by the time he reloaded, so he grabbed his pistol instead. He emptied it into the creature, all to no avail. Harlow’s lifeless face stared Max dead in the eye one last time before she was devoured whole.
“Lemme in there!” Red shouted from behind.
Max ducked out of his way, realizing he could do no more at the moment. He yelled, “Hold your fire!” to Sugar, tapping him on the shoulder.
Red stormed past him, hell-bent on roasting the creature with his flamethrower. Some part of the creature’s body rose too high and triggered the sensor on the Claymore mine. Red got lucky; the explosion occurred before he ran past the mine. The concussion dropped him to his knees and left him reeling and dazed.
“Shit,” Sugar gasped. He’d just loaded a fresh belt of ammo into his machine gun, and he took off running down the hallway.
Max finished reloading his rifle and ran after him. He heard others running, but he couldn’t look back to see who followed.
The beast had turned tail, and Sugar had it running as fast as its stubby legs would permit. He fired in short bursts as he followed. Most of his rounds hit home, blasting off meaty black chunks of gunk.
Max and Sugar reached the corner and found a chunk of the creature congealing into something different. They jumped over the regenerating aberration, trusting that team members following would take care of it while they engaged the larger creature. They rounded the corner, their blazing weapons lighting up the corridor, heralding the beast’s demise.
The hallway was empty.
“What the fuck?” Sugar roared.
Max couldn’t believe what he wasn’t seeing through his reflex sight. He swept the laser dot down the hallway and saw nothing at first.
Then he looked up.
The creature had transformed its solid form back into a liquid substance, oozing upward along the wall into a ventilation duct on the ceiling several feet down the hall. Max and Sugar opened fire, knocking off small globs of the creature but unable to stop its ascent. They could only watch, their smoking guns impotent in their hands, as the last vestiges of the creature slithered upward into the duct.
Max heard Gable blasting away around the corner with his AA-12 shotgun. A pistol joined in moments later. No doubt they were taking care of the part of the beast that had formed from the chunk they had blown off. The firing ceased moments later.
Max shouted, “You get that thing?”
“Yeah,” Gable replied. “It’s down and out. What about the rest of it?”
“Gone—turned into goo and slipped through a duct.”
Silence greeted the news.
“Shit, there’s another one aqui!” Diaz shouted. “Get it!”
More gunfire ensued. Max rounded the corner in time to see Diaz blast a large black form to smithereens. It appeared to have been trying to form legs and oversized pincers.
LT ran up to Max. “There’s bits of that thing all over the hallway, Chief.”
“Not for long. Everybody out! Get back to the room now!”
The team double-timed from the hallway. Max, the last to retreat from the tunnel, jumped over a scrap of gore the size of a strip steak that was beginning to take shape, sprouting legs and claws. “Red! Torch the whole fucking hallway!”
Red nodded and jogged forward, still looking a bit woozy from the explosion. Max and Sugar had his back as he slowly moved down the hallway burning up scraps of the beast. When the flames found the creature Max had jumped over, it screeched and writhed, then attempted to charge Red, who finished it off with another blast of fire.
That proved to be the last of the drama. None of the other scraps came to life. Nevertheless, Max insisted that Red incinerate them all.
Max, Sugar, and Red returned to a silent room, the ubiquitous high-pitched whining sound the only noise. Dr. Kumar sat dumbstruck at one of the workstations, while Ms. Quinones sat bawling in the next chair, clutching her rifle. Diaz crouched next to her trying to console her in Spanish, but to no avail.
Dr. Rogers asked, “You burned everything? You’re sure?”
“Everything.”
Max approached Diaz and put his hand on his shoulder. He could see that Diaz’s nerves already were frayed and trying to console the woman was only wearing at them more. “Go check on the men. Make sure they don’t have any remnants of that creature on them.”
Diaz nodded and walked off.
Max crouched next to Ms. Quinones, who was still crying hysterically, and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Ms. Quinones? Ms. Quinones?”
She didn’t respond. He slowly removed the rifle from her hands and laid it beside her. Taking her hands in his, she finally looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears.
“She...was...my friend.” She said. Her words ragged as she tried to control her sobbing. “The way...she...died.” She put her head down and began to cry again uncontrollably.
Max clenched her hands. “Look at me. Look at me!” His voice was stern, but fatherly. Ms. Quinones looked up at him. “We have all lost people today. Good people. But this isn’t helping. You need to pull yourself together. I don’t know exactly what we are up against, but the only way we stand a chance against these things is if we stick together. We need you. The sadness you feel, you need to channel that into something useful. Can you do that for me?”
Her sobbing lessened in intensity as she nodded her head.
“I need to hear you say it. Can you pull yourself together?”
“Yes.” She said meekly.
“We are going to kill these fucking things. Let me hear you say it.”
She wiped the tears from her face with her forearms. “We are going to kill these fucking things.”
Max wasn’t sure they could kill the creatures, but he knew he needed to give Ms. Quinones some glimmer of hope, and that he wasn’t going down without a fight. It stung his pride to have lost a civilian in his charge. He had lost hostages before during raids, but never one he had liberated. He stood and addressed the team. “We can’t stay here; we need to keep moving.”
“Agreed,” Dr. Rogers said. “And there are likely to be more of them from here on.”
Then he gazed at her and felt what remained of his soul stutter back to life. He needed this woman, but her presence soothed him a b
it too much, removed him from his harsh reality when he most needed to be in tune with it. You’re a great help, but you’re likewise a huge distraction. “We’ll just have to deal with them. Red, you’re back on point.”
“Fuckin’ A, Chief, it’s about time!”
The rest of the team enthusiastically approved.
“Dr. Rogers will be right behind you, giving directions. If she needs to get through, let her by.”
“Roger that.”
“Good. Eat up, people. Check your ammo. We move out in ten.”
Edward had had a dream that night of the stairs leading up to the top of an ancient step pyramid. Instead of in the jungles where they’d been seen before, this was built atop a sheet of ice, surrounded by howling winds. The pyramid was guarded by heavily armed soldiers clad in black, faceless beneath helmets. Though the soldiers stood at attention, they were sobbing there, quietly sobbing. Edward, a grown man, happy and healthy looked up at the vast unknown and around him at these faceless armored men and he was confused.
“Why are you crying?” he asked them.
The guard pulled back the mask, revealing the face of the older nurse, who cried and shook her head.
“It was worth it,” she said, “I swear it was worth it.”
The other kept his mask on and nodded emphatically.
“It is an honor,” it said in a garbled voice as if speaking through some sort of garbled radio hidden inside the helmet, “this was all about you.”
His mother, dressed in a general’s regalia with great big epaulets on her shoulders held the hands of two children, pointedly shoving past Edward and climbing with them up the pyramid. While Edward did not know what it was that was waiting up there, he knew that he did not like it, he knew that his mother was doing something wrong and it would have to be corrected. He followed behind her, hearing in the distance the applause and approval of a studio audience.
“I don’t deserve this,” he tried to explain to his mother, dreading what she was bringing the children up to.
“Someday when you have children of your own,” said his mother, “you’ll understand.”
“This isn’t what I wanted,” he pleaded as they grew ever closer to the top step.
“It’s what you need,” she said.
Edward did not see the top of the pyramid but, still, he awakened with a tremendous feeling of guilt. He did not know what his mother had done for him exactly, but he knew who she was and what she was capable of. He could not judge a parent for loving their child. That should have come naturally and that should have been something he could have felt anytime he’d seen her. That should have been part of his life without having to get terminal cancer.
Edward awakened and he felt like vomiting. The dream reassured him that no, the chemo wasn’t completely to blame. His eyes opened and his mother was sitting there.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” she said.
“I’ll have a long time to sleep,” he snapped back.
She patted his hand. “I know this past week has been trying for you, darling.”
You have no fucking idea, Mother.
“But I need you to hang in there for another few days, okay? You can do that for me?”
This again? “Maybe. What happens in a few days?”
She smiled enigmatically. “We start killing your cancer. Within days my researchers will have a radical new cell-regeneration treatment. This is the break we’ve been working toward, Edward!” She squeezed his hand harder, dropped her voice to a whisper. “You’ll be a trailblazer, the first to undergo treatment by this powerful new method. My researchers say—”
“Oh, well great! Who wouldn’t want to serve as a guinea pig for Greytech research?”
“Edward! Don’t lose your faith in me now, not when the cure is so close!”
He shook his head in frustration. His mother was desperate, ready to place her faith in any quack treatment that rang with the promise of hope. “Seriously, Mother, where is this cure?”
His gut wrenched. He leaned over the side of the bed and vomited in the pan provided for this purpose. The surge felt as though he were vomiting up his guts, and he expected to see his stomach in the bucket when he was through. An overreaction, of course—as usual he’d deposited only a few measly drops of blood and bile into the can. At this point, Debbie would normally provide comfort and assistance, but she wasn’t there.
As if he were leprous, his mother leaned in close but didn’t touch him. “There, there, darling, just a few more days.”
“Do you mind passing me a paper towel?” Edward asked, gasping and winded. “Seeing as how you chased my nurse out of here?”
“Oh. Of course, dear.” She did as he bid. Debbie would have wet the towel and wiped the cold sweat from his brow and the vomit from his lips. But his mother wasn’t about to provide such comfort.
Wouldn’t want to soil her suit with a little puke.
“Do you need any help?” she asked, sounding uncharacteristically vapid.
“Oh no, I’m just peachy.” He paused, out of breath. “Just another day in the ICU.” Most of his days there were peaceful but for his ever-present and excruciating pain, which his mother’s presence seemed only to exacerbate. She’d opened the curtains upon arrival, the first task she always attended. Thankfully it was raining so the outside light wasn’t too intense. She rearranged items on his bedside table unconsciously from time to time as they talked, imposing her own sense of feng shui upon his surroundings, which really annoyed the shit out of him. Sometimes he wished she would just leave him alone to die in this dreary, dismal room.
“Soon, Edward, very soon. You have to—”
“Yes, I have to trust you. Cure is on the way, etcetera, etcetera.”
“It is, Edward! Next week at the latest, perhaps as soon as a couple of days.”
Edward stared at his mother and found he couldn’t help but love her. Perhaps she was a domineering control freak, but always acted in what she perceived to be his best interest. She’d been right more often than wrong.
This time it was different. Do it now! Just come out and say it! “Mom, please listen to yourself. ‘Perhaps’ and ‘at the latest’? Those aren’t words in your lexicon. Appointments, schedules, commitments: you live a life of order and discipline and expect the same of everyone around you. Yet you tell me to hang in and hope that perhaps I might be saved. It’s not like you to grasp at straws like this.”
Her painted lips formed a straight and determined line. “I don’t have a concrete date yet, that’s true enough. But I have more than straws in my arsenal, I assure you. You will live—I will see to it personally. You are not destined to die like this.”
Agreed. “Mom, I just can’t—”
“No. You can and you will.”
“Damn it, will you just listen to me for once?”
“Because I know what you have to say.”
Edward wanted to preach his frustration and rage right into his mother’s face. He hadn’t the energy to do so, however. Rasping and exasperated, he said, “We need to talk about my wishes for once, not yours.”
She narrowed her eyes, quizzical. “What do you mean, darling? My wishes are simply for what’s best for you.”
“No, they’re not, because you rarely see fit to listen to me.” His brain pounded in a slow and agonizing rhythm, like some monstrous diseased heart ready to seize up at any moment. She had frustrated him to the point where he could barely think. Finally, he raised his head and held up a hand to halt any further platitudes from his mother. “Now, this is what I want.”
The phone in her purse chirped with an incoming call.
“Seriously?” Edward huffed.
She ignored him and checked the screen. “Damn it! I’m sorry, darling, but I have to take this; it’s quite urgent.”
Edward laughed—cackled, actually—for the first time in a long time. So typical of her, using any pretense to avoid unpleasant conversations regarding his future or lack thereof.
She probably ordered one of her lackeys to call and rescue her, give her an excuse to return to the office.
After a threatening glance like one might use to quiet a rebellious five-year-old, she swept out of the room into the hallway to discuss her business. Though the cancer had eaten away at nearly all his vital organs, Edward’s hearing remained just fine. He could make out some of his mother’s words. Listening intently, he wondered whether the conversation regarded him and the miracle treatments that would perhaps commence next week, not that there was any ‘perhaps’ about it coming too late.
His mother began: “What is it, Peter...? Well, I want assurances in writing that I will have full access to the technology... That long...? Damn the weather, I want in there now! Yes, I will be there. I will take care of things myself this time... Yes, I know what that entails!” Then the cold steel voice of her omnipotence spoke up. Edward knew the tone well and couldn’t help but pity whom ever she addressed. “I want the best, Peter, nothing less! We will need total discretion on this! I want this nightmare brought to a close.” She sighed. “Tomorrow morning? That’s the earliest...? You can’t find one pilot who’ll fly there now?” She laughed. “Why the hell do I pay taxes then? Look, just get it done. No screw-ups this time!” Edward heard the phone’s electronic beep as his mother severed the connection. Her high heels clacked on the linoleum tiles as she entered his room.
Edward asked, “So who was that?”
“An important acquaintance, dear, one you’ve never met.”
“Of course not. Anyway...” He bristled at still being treated like a child, an outsider never trusted with all the details of his treatment. The tears he felt coming needed to dry. Crying was forbidden in the Grey household, along with just about every emotion that didn’t assist one in conquering the world. “We need to have a serious talk, Mom, the kind that will require you to shut off your phone for a while, if you can bear five minutes of isolation.”
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