Project Northwoods

by Jonathan Charles Bruce

  She felt the cold hit her like a hammer, the insistent drop in temperature penetrating both her body armor and the inner lining. Her skin prickled, and before she even processed the cold working its way into her bones, steam gushed from her mouth as she exhaled, shooting out in two directions from her assault mask before vanishing into the darkness. Seconds after that, her eyepiece fogged up, then frosted over. It didn’t take long for her breathing mask to clog with ice. Panicking, she ripped it off her head.

  Brown hair collapsed messily to her shoulders as she threw the useless thing to the ground. The thunk of other masks and grunts of disgust signaled that her unit was having the same problem. She brought a hand up to her earpiece, trying to hold back a rapid, inexplicable, and growing fear.

  “Beta unit, do you read?” The sister squad remained silent. “Delta unit, do you copy?” Delta did not respond.

  “Sergeant, the fog!” one of her team members stuttered. She looked up. Sure enough, a wave of fog rolled aggressively toward them, hitting their unit without the slightest bit of force, but overtaking their senses. It was thick, cold, and made it hard to breathe, but it was still typical fog. Leamon felt her heart thunder in her chest. She hoped it was typical fog.

  One of her men shook, terrified, pointing his automatic rifle rapidly back and forth in the fog bank. Fear had worked its way into his brain, making him try harder to see through the fog but lowering his ability to actually concentrate. “She’s here,” he kept whispering, loud enough for the others to hear.

  “Stay together!” Leamon barked. The unit pulled together with the exception of the whispering private. He kept muttering as the trees noisily wafted in the wind. The fog briefly relented, and they were still surrounded by the barren trees and nothing else. Their slender limbs dangled down limply, like arms too lazy to reach out and grasp their prey. “We need to move–”

  The crunch of the private hitting the ground interrupted her orders, his half-yelp of shock providing the punctuation. Leamon shouted the moment he hit the ground and sprinted after him as he was dragged through the dirt toward a distant tree. He was screaming, sobbing, before being choked off, his last sound a gurgle before a wet pop ended his protests. With that, he stopped moving. Sergeant Leamon caught up with him at the base of a tree and knelt by his side. She gently rolled his head back, his eyes not meeting hers. Rather, they twitched wildly, glazed, as blood dribbled from his mouth.

  He was smiling.

  “Sarge!” someone called behind her, the remaining unit raising their rifles.

  She looked up, just now noticing the branches… no, something else… vines, maybe… entering her vision. She was knocked away with a flick of one of them, the slippery coldness biting into her face and leaving an oily, dirty feeling that overshadowed the force of the blow. There was something else in the physical touch… a feeling of complete isolation… dread.

  She stopped when she crashed into a tree, her back cracking loudly against it. Disoriented, she winced at the roaring pops of rifle fire erupting from the other eight members of her unit. She looked up from her prone position.

  The fog actually seemed to illuminate the monstrosity, a writhing mass of tentacles. Four of the snaking limbs slammed into the earth, kicking up dirt and needles as it went, propelling the rest of the mass toward her men. They continued to focus their assault on the thing, some backing away as it closed the distance between them. Two black, slimy tendrils lashed out, grabbed the nearest Enforcer, and wrapped around his arm and torso. With a twist, his gun arm was removed and he was casually tossed aside.

  Her mind was going fuzzy, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. It had to be an illusion… a trick… it was the only way she could mentally cope with the thing as it effortlessly whipped an arm across another member of her unit, staggering him. He fell to his knees, blood somehow gushing from beneath his intact bulletproof vest. Leamon got to her feet and grabbed her rifle as two more Enforcers were snagged and dragged toward the writhing thing’s central mass, absorbing the bullets that her men continually shot in its direction. Their ability to distinguish friend from foe was forgotten, and they continued to fire long after their comrades were dead and dropped. The sergeant opened fire from behind, the bullets having no discernible effect.

  Half her squad was dead and the remainder clearly wished they were. One stopped firing completely and fell to his knees, giggling as he clawed at his face. The thing slunk past him, ignoring his vigorous self-mutilation in favor of one of the three still standing who had turned to run. Tentacles snapped up, wrapping around nearby trees to sling-shot the bulk of the aberration onto the running Enforcer. He was raised, flailing, above the whipping, snarling mass and thrown, hard, into the nearest tree. The body collapsed, shattered, as the thing buckled in place before a ropy organic net launched from it and snapped around one of the two Enforcers. Screaming, the woman was pulled into the dark mass and, with a crunch, went silent before being dropped unceremoniously to the earth.

  The clicks of an empty magazine filled the night as the last man standing still pointed the weapon defiantly at the creature. With a quick snap, the thing swept around and jammed a black tendril through his heart, pinning him to the ground. He slacked instantly, dead before he had any cognition of it.

  Leamon was the only one left. Her rifle went dry as the myriad of tentacles withdrew into the thing’s body. Only the four it used for locomotion remained, leaving what looked like an elongated husk of a body dangling from it. It moved quietly over to her, and she immediately recognized it as a fully-formed, though repulsively elongated, man. A business suit which seemed poorly tailored to his size hung off of the body. But its face…

  Oh, its face.

  It towered over her, and she gazed upwards, almost physically feeling her mind run screaming away from the visage of the thing in front of her. Leamon was suddenly crying, wondering where her mother was as she quaked in front of an open coffin. Her uncle lay in the casket, his spindly body too small for his suit, his face slack and white. As young as she was, all she could think about was her uncle decomposing while his suit remained crisp and immaculate.

  Death.

  Words… words bristled through her ears. The thing was talking to her despite…

  Its head was all wrong.

  Do. Not. Fear, it said, devoid of any semblance of empathy. It was cold, hollow, entirely alien… but so close to her heart that Leamon could do nothing but believe. There was nothing to fear.

  The thing’s hand reached down, grasped around her throat, and hoisted her into the air. At its clammy-yet-dry, horrible touch, Leamon’s head was filled with cold fear, images of her as the last woman alive in a world devoid of life before flashes of her trapped in a city, surrounded by her family and friends who refused to acknowledge her greetings or cries for help. With panic, she realized the fear was welcome… as though something inside her was enjoying her terror, feasting on it.

  Struggle. Ends, came the voice, and the not-a-man was with her now. She backed away, but it didn’t react, didn’t move. Without the tentacles flailing around the necks of her loved ones, it would have looked almost normal had it not been for… that fucking face…

  And she was back in the woods, face-to-thing with the monster and felt she was smiling. Widely. Cognition. Curse. Death. Cure. Insanity. Reprieve. And she laughed. It was right. It had always been right. All the things in her life, all her worries, all her cares, had been replaced by staring this… thing in the face. And even though there was nothing else but terror left in her brain, she had nothing else to compare it to.

  The fingers unslithered from her throat and she fell, hard, to the forest floor, her ankles shattering from the impact. She didn’t care.

  There was no one left to care.

  Zombress always hated opening her eyes after she had to unleash her dark id, the nightmare which lived inside her, sealed off and divorced from any facet of her higher self. It was a part of her that didn’t understand humanity, couldn�
��t comprehend it, and through whatever means it had, would rend it to pieces. It was neither evil nor good; it was beyond such words. The thing lurked inside of her, coming into being only at her command despite its every attempt to run free.

  She preferred being thought of as the Queen of the Dead, but the Queen of Fear moniker was more infamous, whispered more than spoken, and never truly understood. It was that name which the heroes at the Guild felt she would use against them, the name which caused Arbiter to spike her, head first, into the floor. She hadn’t begun to transform into the creature, even in that desperate hour… the devastation would have been immense, the thing stopping at nothing to kill or drive every last witness to insanity. Somehow, someone had been able to mimic the fog in the eyes of those present, induce the fear, make them panic. She hadn’t even heard the voice, that cold, slithering voice, seemingly both male and female, call to her.

  It was that voice which called to her during her flight to the woods, and she knew that it held the key to the villains’ escape. It was the only chance they had. She hadn’t regained control of any of her abilities, the heavy-duty sleep anesthetic she was on having not yet run its course. But somehow, the foreign consciousness, if it was sentient at all, had remained alert, aware, and aching for its chance to attempt a connection to humanity.

  She opened her eyes on the still forest, the fog having long since evaporated. She instantly knew seven Enforcers were dead, the fleeing electrical energy of their nervous systems calling to her. The last three were gibbering madly, one having clawed his own eyes out and chuckling inanely toward his bloody palms. She knelt on the ground, observing the glittering brass casings in the moon’s light, wondering whether or not other waves of heroes would be closing in on the location.

  It didn’t matter. She extended her middle and index finger and drew in the dirt, relieved at the sight of faint silvery light trailing behind her movements. One by one, the dead bodies were yanked into the air, drawn by invisible strings. They staggered and slouched upright, their husks shuddering to the tune of madmen’s laughter. As each body stirred to life, Zombress had the dimmest perception of their sensory organs, effectively turning them into marionettes of flesh.

  “Alright, boys and girls,” Zombress announced to her mini-horde of undead abominations. One twitched its arm in a half-circle, almost saluting. She was honestly just practicing her ability to puppeteer, the dulling effects of the narcotics still making it hard to concentrate. If she had been in a better mood, she would have had them go full zombie on the other Enforcers in an effort to break their ranks. But she had other ideas. “Find your former comrades and bring them back here before calling it a night,” she cooed. At once, the seven bodies staggered and lurched toward their comrades.

  There was no need to give orders. No henchmen to inspire, no heroes to terrify, no world leaders to intimidate. They weren’t capable of understanding anything. It was a half-hearted effort to feel like some degree of normalcy had returned, as though exercising some control over the dead would allow her to feel like she had a say in the world at large.

  Somewhere inside, she knew the living nightmare lurked, reminding her of at least one of the reasons she was one of the few remaining Deity-class Bestowed on the planet.

  Sergeant Watson led the way through the forest, drawn by the sound of rifle fire. He had told Delta unit to continue after the fleeing villains while they investigated the noise. They had lost contact with Alpha unit before the shots broke the night’s stillness. From the sounds of it, it didn’t take long for the battle to finish, returning a deafening silence to the woods. Watson repeatedly tried to hail Alpha as they closed in on their approximate location, but no one responded.

  A twig snapped somewhere ahead of him and he stopped, bringing his fist up in a signal to his squad. The others were no doubt crouching, bringing their rifles up to scan the horizon. Slowly, one by one, seven figures staggered to the top of the nearest hill, their heads lolling downward. They were Enforcers, but something was wrong. The way they were moving was stiff, uncoordinated… like someone was clumsily pulling their muscles to make them walk.

  “Alpha unit?” Watson called out. There was no answer. “Identify yourselves!” Still nothing, not even a wave. He turned to one of his men. “Hit one with a rubber round.” The woman nodded, swapped out the magazine of her rifle, and fired. The bullet hit the third one from the left, dead in the kneecap. Soundlessly, the Enforcer fell to one knee before getting right up again. Watson grunted in irritation. “Shit.”

  One by one, six of the zombies snapped into action, shambling at high speed right at them. And one by one, each of them was brought down by a flurry of shots to the head, breaking whatever control their puppet master had on them. Only the last one on the hill remained, a ghostly silhouette. The sergeant raised his gun to fire, only to watch it turn and walk back down the hill.

  Without a word, he motioned his team to follow.

  Zombress, clad in a forest camouflaged armored suit, watched from the treetop as the puppet returned to the tiny clearing, went to the lone survivor, and collapsed into a heap. The living Enforcers followed before spreading out to the other bodies. They wouldn’t have any luck with the rest of the unit; they had bled out from their wounds. The leader followed the marionette to where it had collapsed and knelt near Sergeant Leamon. After a moment, he tapped his earpiece, prompting Zombress to bring the one she had stolen from the sergeant to her ear.

  “Delta team, fall back immediately.” The leader of the squad below was gruff and impatient, clearly a stereotype beyond all others.

  “What?” The woman on the other end was unhappy with this command.

  “Zombress left us a warning.” The villain snorted at this. “She slaughtered Alpha Team.” He looked at the others. They gave him some unseen signal and he grunted in response. “Leamon’s the only survivor… for what that’s worth.” The Queen of the Dead briefly contemplated how much therapy it would take to bring the woman back from whatever hole she had been driven into.

  “Damn it.”

  “I hear that.” The sigh was audible over the earpiece. “We should leave it to the unit on the road. We’re just scaring a bunch of people already running.” Zombress’s eyebrow rose in dismay. The villains were heading into a trap, and the best defense they had was presently up in a tree. She looked toward the horizon, in the direction of the others. Maybe there would be enough time to save them… maybe.

  She leapt off the top of the tree to the next, then again. She couldn’t risk dropping to the ground just yet. She had to find a way to get back to the others before…

  “This is Gamma unit,” the earpiece chattered. “Recon reports villains are nearing destination.”

  “Copy that, Gamma unit,” the squad leader growled as Zombress leapt from the tree tops and dove through the branches. “They are unaware of your presence.” She hit the ground in a roll, snapped upright, and was running at full speed in the time of a single breath. It would be foolish of her to directly confront the Enforcers now. They would easily subdue her in her weakened state and any other heroes would just make it faster. She couldn’t afford to be recaptured.

  Neither can Morgan.

  If she was lucky, she could find Morgan and escape. It appeared to be the only way to salvage the situation.

  Steven kept looking over his shoulder through the woods, trying not to seem panicked. But it had been so long since Zombress disappeared to cut off pursuit. She was a scary lady, and her continued presence had made him uneasy. But now that she was gone and the implied protection having vanished with her, he had never felt more naked. Even the gun slung on his shoulder felt more like dead weight than a means of defense.

  It was… unpleasant.

  The girl next to him was named Morgan, from what he had eavesdropped. She trudged, arms folded and silent, in a plodding march. Her eyes were unfocused and darting as her mouth moved to something under her breath. Steven couldn’t help but question his dedication to
the cause of villainy when so many people on his side just freaked him right the fuck out.

  Then again, the procession ahead of him was a pretty upbeat affair. Having had no attackers since they had left the Fortress, most seemed in good spirits. A few had slunk into the night, but the group was still almost wholly intact. It was heartwarming, in a way.

  “She tried to kill me,” Morgan said, suddenly shocking him back from his dream state.

  He looked at her. “I wouldn’t take it personally.”

  It was her turn to look at him. “My mom tried to kill me.” She went back to staring at nothing. “It can’t get much more personal.”

  Steven sucked air in through his teeth. He tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to mind. “That sucks,” was the best he could do.

  And it was a poor choice of words. Morgan laughed and shook her head in annoyance. “Poet, aren’t you?”

  He ran a hand over his face, trying to brush off his brief contraction of foot-in-mouth disease. “Why?”

  “Why, what?”

  He tried to play it cool, imagining what his brother Mat would say. “Why, in the midst of all that, did your mother go after you?” He chuckled. “Didja steal her boyfriend?”

  She looked away, then coughed unconvincingly. “Yeah, actually. Kind of embarrassing.” Morgan casually brushed her hair out of her face.

  Part of him immediately wanted to stop the conversation and run, screaming, into the darkness. But she was cute, he hadn’t been close to getting laid in months, and there was something about family issues that made him want to play the hero… if one could forgive the odious term. “She was probably just jealous.”

  She arched her eyebrows for a moment. “Doubtful.” He stopped her and tried to look as smolderingly intense as possible. She cocked an eyebrow this time and stared. “You feeling okay?” she asked.