He kept pointing his weapon at the tribal warriors, but so far they weren’t moving, just watching. Which somehow was even creepier. He moved away from the trees where most of them were concealed, further into the clearing.
He turned at a screeching sound. It was a toucan. He relaxed his guard and lowered his weapon. Then the toucan charged him! Attached to the chest of one of the tribal warriors. Apparently the “bird” wasn’t simply being illuminated by the foliage. Cronos had forgotten how much of a popular choice the toucans were among the bird men. Their flowing colored beaks, that came in different varieties, no two exactly the same, no doubt the explanation.
With a jerk of his arm, Cronos doused him in flames from the flame thrower. The guy was burning alive and he was still coming after Cronos. Cronos had no choice but to resort to hand-to-hand. He sure as hell wasn’t going to run from this guy into the welcoming arms of his buddies hiding out in the trees. Cronos grabbed Flamer’s arm, and flipped him, using the guy’s own momentum and weight against him. The native just got up after Cronos had heard his spine snap against the rock. Charged him again. Again Cronos flipped him but the possessed tribesman had the sense to hold on this time. He went rolling right along with his attacker. By the time Cronos managed to detach himself with an elbow to the windpipe, he was aflame himself. He rolled on the wet leaves to put himself out.
Every time Cronos showed off his Jujitsu, the forest showed off its magic by lighting another patch of itself afire in response to The Flaming Man. Cronos was getting tired of this shit in more ways than one. He hopped on his ear mike to Leon. “I lit this native afire. Now he’s a bigger flamer than the queens in San Francisco’s Castro district. Some of whom are my friends, by the way, in case that sounded homophobic. But he just won’t die. That breathy, gasping sound you hear is of him choking me.” A groan as Cronos managed to break the hold. “Oh, and for the record, he doesn’t think much of my jujitsu either.”
Panting.
Twigs Crunching.
Rocks sliding.
“I’m ashamed to admit those sounds you’re hearing now is of me running.” Cronos paused only long enough to rethink his options. Jump off the cliff into the pool below? It would be a huge action movie cliché. Or turn and wrestle with The Flaming Man some more as he closed in on him. Okay, cliché it was.
Over the edge he went.
He was relaxing in the cool depths of the water, waiting for his natural buoyancy to pull him back to the surface when The Flaming Man plunged into the water just yards from him. Still burning alive! The flames not the least bit daunted by the water.
Now that he was illuminating the darkness, Cronos noticed that there were fish down here that could swallow him whole. And as if they were currently debating the matter. Perhaps that was a moot point vis-à-vis the bigger picture.
Cronos paddled to the surface like a tadpole determined to become a frog in one swim. Gasping for air and spitting water the second he breached, he still managed to speak into his ear mike to convey the salient points. “The son of a bitch followed me into the lagoon, into the damn water, and he’s still burning alive! The flames as defiant as the look on his face. I didn’t sign on for this voodoo shit, Leon. I draw the line at real-world killing. That’s scary enough.”
God help him, he thought, if the mike in his ear wasn’t waterproof. Some engineer had to have thought of that, right? On second thought, God help him, period.
***
Hearing Cronos carry on at the other end of his mike, Leon’s face twisted into a mask of worry. “You think he’s flying high on the local berries too?” Laney said, walking up to him.
“Could be. He’s a new recruit. Can’t vouch for his training the way I can for the other men.”
“You sound about as convinced as I do,” she said.
Leon gazed up at Natty who looked guiltier than ever. “You know who looks even less convinced?” They both stared at Natty who did his best to avert his eyes. “What are you not telling me, boy?”
“I am not a boy!”
“You don’t want me to make you cry like one, you better give me an answer.” Leon took a menacing step towards him. Laney held him back with a hand. Gave Natty a chance to wipe his eyes.
“Maybe you should bring one of their bodies for my wife to study.”
“In case you haven’t been listening, they don’t exactly sit still. Not even when they’re dead,” Leon said taking another step. Laney took the step with him, her arm still in a restraining position, like trying to hold back a charging tiger with a length of dental floss.
“Then restrain one of the dead bodies!” Natty blurted. “Do I have to do all the thinking around here?”
Laney nearly lost control of him but Leon suddenly shifted his focus to her. “What have you got to do with any of this?”
It was her turn to look away.
“She’s the world leading expert in bioengineering,” Natty said in a tone that sounded suspiciously like someone outing his gay brother. “Like you, she teaches classes to the people who are supposed to be the best in the field, even if they aren’t as good as her.”
Leon glared at her. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “There’s nothing in my medicine cabinet that can explain what your men are coming up against out there.”
Leon shifted his glare back to Natty. Who lowered his eyes. “Just bring one of the bodies back here,” Natty said. “I might have some ideas. With my wife’s help, maybe we can get to the bottom of this.”
Snorting like a damn race horse crossing the finish line, Leon got on the COM to his entire team. “One of you guys bring me back one of those bastards, restrained. The rest of you keep trying to find ways to kill them and I don’t mean so they can get up again. If you can’t find a way to kill them, find a way to restrain them and bring them back too. The more guinea pigs the better.”
***
DeWitt, overhearing the commotion on the COM lines, same as everyone else, and Leon delivering the final verdict, tensed up. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t be able to tell because his muscles were clenched until they were as hard as rock just from hearing Ajax and Cronos go at it on the other end of the mike. But his already tight muscles knotted up further. He was officially cramping now. He walked just as much to get through this patch of forest as to avoid collapsing where he was.
He knew he was being herded into the clearing up ahead. The tribesmen and women, both chasing him in equal numbers—didn’t anyone tell these primitive bastards women’s lib required a first-world mentality?—left him little choice. He couldn’t very well turn back on himself and take them all on.
Once in the clearing he decided he’d play along by planting himself dead center of it. Turning on himself three hundred and sixty degrees again and again. And he’d continue to keep doing so until he grew eyes in back of his head. Slowly, he was able to separate out their disguised bodies standing about him in the field. They had him completely surrounded! At least thirty of them. He had no idea how they’d made it this close from the edge of the forest. No body camouflage was that good. Especially not in a clearing. It was like they could sense at what point his eyes were focused and just moved about in his shifting depth of field, staying forever in the fuzzy areas just out of focus.
They weren’t just slipping among those tall, bioluminescent, insect-attracting fronds and plants, either, using them for cover. The tall plants and fronds of the meadow were tattooed on their bodies, right along with the birds! The natives were fluorescing due to some body gel they rubbed over their tattoos. The ones to his back releasing the fireflies, they must have carried them the way kids do in bottles, or perhaps in leather pouches, until they were needed for distraction. When they dropped the subterfuge by smiling menacingly or opening their eyes, he looked all the more foolish, considering their glow-in-the-dark bodies.
“Look at you, left to be all heroic without anyone to give witness. It’s a capital offense, is what it is. Hold up there, guys!” DeWitt raised his
hand in a stalling tactic. Pulled the digital camera from his pocket with the pop out lens. Snapped some shots of the natives. Pressed the record button. “As you can see, I’m doing a faithful reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand. The dauntless DeWitt nonetheless strikes a defiant pose and hits them with a steely smile.” He turned the camera on himself and tasted the flash firsthand; it nearly blinded him. “Good one, DeWitt. Ah… unsatisfied with the challenge, DeWitt blinds himself just to make things more interesting. He’s pausing now for the sake of the ratings, just in case there are any kids in the audience.” He mumbled the last part, thinking of his ten-year-old son, “And so he has some plausible reason for how the hell he got out of this.” He tucked the camera back in his pocket.
“Okay, you wise asses, you’re about to see why they leave fighting to the professionals. Points for attitude, though,” he thought.
The natives charged.
It was like they could smell false bravado the way animals smelled fear.
Maybe they could hear his heart skipping more beats than a .33 LP from a bygone era.
Maybe they could see that his eyes could no longer focus, the muscles cramping under all the eyestrain to make them out.
Maybe they just wanted to embrace the cool now that his blood had run cold.
He fired the grappling hook at the end of his M16 at the tree’s canopy and went along with it for the ride. Leaving behind a small gift from his backpack for his friends on the ground.
When the explosive went off, their camouflage-by-day and taunt-by-night body tattoo colors were erased in a cloud of red dust.
DeWitt slid back down the line, chuckling all the while. The laughs bubbling up in the wake of his anxiety like bubbles of hot air in flowing lava. He untethered himself from the line. “Ambush me, will ya? How you like that for an ambush, dickheads?!” He realized from the way he blasted that line that he had still not regained his professional cool. But maybe he was permitted some over-the-top emotions under the circumstances.
He was gathering up his rope, coiling it around his arm when the mist of floating red particles reagglutinated, forming back up with the blood spatter and organs and bones. Like watching a film on explosives on rewind. Every last one of the natives reformed, whole, in the same instant. Not even one at a time!
DeWitt dropped the rope and ran before the bodies, made whole again, had the sense to come after him. Their faces didn’t quite show the focused intent of earlier. Whatever was behind the magic, it clearly took a while for their higher brain functions to come back on line.
By then, DeWitt was out of the clearing. He had maybe a hundred yard headstart on the throng which was now sounding their war cries and shaking the forest in the mad dash they were making after him. How do even thirty people running in tandem shake the forest, DeWitt? Doesn’t make sense. Unless… There’s more than thirty. A lot more. He swallowed hard.
DeWitt held his camera over his head to capture the faces on the natives chasing him. Then he lowered it so he could fit his face in the same shot with the natives in the background. “DeWitt is heroically running from the numberless natives now because, as it turns out, showing them your back, is a most heinous offense to these tribal people. Worse than pissing in their popcorn.” He mumbled, “Thank God,” as he glanced back over his shoulder. “As this camera doesn’t come with a telephoto lens, I’m going to have to act the part of the scared shitless natives for them in the name of posterity.” He zoomed the camera on his face and proceeded to snap the fleeting expressions across his facade. “Just keep this in mind, kids. Not everyone is as good an actor as I am. So you may need to bring a cameraman to handle the B-roll. Just make sure you have enough to pay for his silence if things don’t go exactly as planned.” He tucked the camera back in his pocket.
Tapping the mike on his earpiece that put him on an encrypted party line with Leon and the others, DeWitt said, “Just so we’re clear. I’m not the one who’ll be bringing back any prisoners. Just blew thirty of the bastards to hell. I mean there was nothing left but a dust cloud of red corpuscles. And then it was like watching a film on rewind. They just pulled themselves back together again and came after me. Leon, for the record, I vote for adding a voodoo doctor to the team. I know you don’t believe in this shit, but I tell you, a man could get religion out here real fast.”
***
Leon heard DeWitt carrying on across the open mike, and nearly cracked his own hand bones making fists. “You listen to me, all of you,” he said, jumping on the line. “This is not voodoo.”
He took a calming breath as much for him as for his men. “What was that Arthur C. Clarke once said? Any science, sufficiently advanced, will appear like magic. Just so happens we have two of the most advanced scientific minds on the planet. They’ll uncover the technology behind all this. And no one is getting past me to get to them, trust me. So pull your nelly asses together. Grow a pair. And bring me my guinea pigs!” He tapped his earbud to disengage the COM.
Natty stepped up to him. “Not voodoo, huh?”
“Oh, it’s voodoo all right. Can’t tell them that; they’re freaked out enough already. Actually, they call it Macumba down here. The worshipper becomes possessed by their god by way of ritualistic dance and drug use. Most of the drug derivatives that facilitate the trance are drawn from the bark of the Viola tree.”
“How many of these gods are there?”
“No telling. It’s up to the shaman to decide which god has taken possession and which ceremony in turn to perform.”
“And for those of us who don’t believe in this b.s.?”
“Well, that’s just it. Belief is a powerful thing. I’ve seen men take over a dozen bullets without them losing their determination to stick a knife in you. And they didn’t know faith like these guys know faith.”
“Nah. Even if that’s part of it, there’s something else going on here and I intend to find out what.”
“That’s my boy.” Leon squeezed Natty’s shoulders. Took a look at the protective circle enclosing the clearing he, Natty, and Laney were standing in. As if they were resorting at least unconsciously to magic themselves. He was half tempted to distribute their scattered camping gear in the shape of a pentagram inside the circle.
“So, not to tell you your job or anything,” Natty said, “but… why aren’t you using any of that cool military jargon when you talk over an unsecured line? You know, ‘Copy that? And Silicon 1 to Silicon Base?”
Leon smiled. “They know where we are; they know who we are. They know everything about us. We know virtually nothing about them. Nothing much we can do to change that dynamic.”
“We could feed them false intel if they’re listening in.”
“Yeah, only I don’t think they’ll bother.”
“Why not?”
“They’ve got us surrounded, outnumbered, outgunned, and outfoxed, or so they think. If you’re a fox, just how much recon work you gonna do on the hen house exactly?”
“But…”
Leon squeezed his shoulder, shook him gently. “The line’s encrypted, and it’s doubtful they speak a word of English in any case.”
“But…” Natty seemed to have finally hit critical mass with Leon’s reasoning and just caved under the weight of it all rather than put up any more resistance. “You can take all the fun out of a military exercise, you know that?”
Leon heard a rustling of leaves. It wasn’t the wind. It wasn’t some animal. His training alerted him to the fact that such thoughts were just wishful thinking. “Shit!” he mumbled.
“What’s that?” Natty said, picking up on Leon’s heightened tension.
“Fun.”
EIGHTEEN
Crumley was tracking one of the bird men bastards now. He bent down to scrape up some of the phosphorescing substance the Indian warrior had left on the side of a tree he’d brushed up against. Put it in a specimen container. Crumley had no shortage of them. They used to call him CSI for his sample collecting. But eventually they swit
ched to Crumley when they realized he never left anything behind he couldn’t salvage, even the crumbs of a spent fire. Or the flecks of a native’s phosphorescing gel as the case maybe. With the advent of handheld DNA sequencers, a single crumb was often more than he needed. He had been quartermaster for quite some time. And he’d had to feed troops half-starved for the interruption of their supply lines. But give him a handheld DNA sequencer, and some 3D printers, and he was good to go. He could beat Christ for making fishes and loaves of bread appear out of thin air. He was never too far from a CRISPR unit, and a MAGE and CAGE combo, for the same reason. Of course, with ALPHA UNIT’s help, he could do more with his than the boys at MIT. He could cook you up a dinosaur egg for breakfast with a piece of fossil. Granted, he had other reasons today for his scrounging tactics.
Not the least being getting his hand on that femme fatale he was stalking. Gorgeous as she was and body-painted better than his favorite Olivia DeBerardinis pinup posters? Shit, it was love at first sight. But just in case she got it in her mind to squirm away from his lover’s embrace, he figured he might need something more alluring than his magnetic personality to hold her in place. It might take some scientific probes of the specimen he had collected to figure out how to get around the jacked-up abilities their herbal oil infusions leant them.
Crumley saw her up ahead on the trail. Stark naked. Though he supposed the all-encompassing tattoos constituted a kind of skin suit. She was largely blue and yellow and green, like a peacock. He couldn’t wait to get her to spread her feathers for him. He whistled at her and she turned. She made a fingering gesture to come closer as she continued to walk slowly backwards.
Mind of a Child: Sentient Serpents (OMEGA FORCE and ALPHA UNIT Book 1) Page 15