Different Paths [Book 3]

by Nat Kozinn

  The attack takes less than 10 seconds, and The Beast sprints away, disappearing into rows of fragrant bushes. He sets his sights on the second dish; it is over two miles away. The Beast can cover that ground in just a few moments, and that’s even with his speed reduced to stay out of any wandering searchlights.

  As he makes it to the end of the row of bushes, and just before he can make his move on the second vehicle, a series of deafening rings erupt from around the facility. The remnants of the first dish have been found, The Beast has to hurry.

  “What is that about?” says a soldier standing in front of the second truck. He’s forced to shout to be heard over the alarm.

  “Me!” The Beast screams as he comes charging out from behind the bush.

  The Beast ignores the soldiers and heads straight towards the vehicle. His Maceo Steel knife making just as short a work of this target as it did the last one. A few of the soldiers manage to overcome their shock and awe and fire their rifles at The Beast. But, as the Lord promised, the bullets bounce harmlessly off the ForteSilk armor his Chosen brother provided. Bullets continue to bounce off his back as he disappears into a grove of trees. He can smell the orange blossoms.

  He sets off towards the next truck. This target will not be so soft, the cockroaches are massing. The Beast can hear engines roaring and heading in his direction. He abandons all pretexts of stealth and charges full speed towards the mounted dish. A spotlight turns toward him and struggles to stay with him as he runs at full breakneck speed. Some soldiers open fire but the pathetic humans aren’t capable of hitting a target moving so quickly, and the orange trees help.

  The Beast closes in on the dish, a trail of bullets on his heels. He bends his knees for a final leap, when a series of deafening booms ring out. A shell from a massive machine gun hits The Beast square in the chest. His ForteSilk armor holds, but his body does not. He feels two ribs break as he’s knocked off his feet.

  The bullets keep coming, cutting the trees around him like a buzz saw and ripping divots in the dirt that push clouds of dust into his eyes. Another massive shell bounces off the armor on his back, knocking the wind out of him.

  The Beast feels a surge of rage, how dare these pathetic Forgotten Sons challenge him! He will show them!

  He takes the Maceo Steel shield off his back and places it down in front of him, like he is part of an ancient Roman phalanx. The soldiers on their mounted gun get a bead on him. The shells explode on the shield while The Beast fights to stand his ground. He digs his heels into the dirt and withstands. The Lord needs him to be strong, stronger than the humans’ pathetic weapons. His teeth rattle and his muscles ache, but he does not give in as hundreds of rounds ping off the shield. Finally, the gun lets out a hollow whirl, its ammo supply exhausted.

  Now those Forgotten Sons will pay, he will bathe in their blood, savoring the taste of their flesh, accompanied by a symphony of their pathetic whimpers. He charges.

  “Oh God he’s coming, reload damn it,” a soldier yells.

  The Lord is not on their side, He is on The Beast’s. Hearing the invocation of the Lord does snap The Beast out of his rage, though. The Lord did not task him with killing these pathetic creatures, he is to focus on the job at hand, and that is to destroy the target.

  The Beast blows by the soldiers on the truck as they fumble to reload their massive gun. They open fire, with their standard issue rifles, but those bullets are just gnats to his ForteSilk armor. He charges into the truck with the dish, cutting the metal like he’s chopping vegetables. A few short swipes and the affront to God is turned to rubble.

  He turns to stare at the soldiers one last time; they almost have their mounted gun reloaded. Despite all his instincts telling him to rip out their pathetic throats, he turns and runs in the other direction, bullets chasing him along his path. He has done the Lord’s work.

  11

  Prepare for war and that’s just what we’ll get. Deploying armed forces on American soil doesn’t make us seem serious, it makes us seemed panicked. No matter how you feel about the work stoppage, it has not been violent. And thank God for that. Call me foolish, but I don’t think deploying a bunch of terrified nineteen year-olds with rifles on their backs and training in how to kill is the best way to keep the situation non-violent. Planning for the worst is a good way to guarantee it happens.

  “Let's Leave Tanks Out of This” by Forest Brown, think.Net News LA (printed in the Los Angeles Times)

  The National Guardsmen are all yelling behind me. It wasn’t a difficult escape. I’m moving a tad slow due to my current calorie quagmire, but I’m still plenty fast. Private Walker didn’t pay nearly as close attention to me as Private Jackson did. By the time he turned back from his conversation with his buddies, I was already a thousand yards away, disappearing into the midnight darkness. And I managed to grab a big jug of water to boot.

  My target is easy to make out. It is the only other source of artificial light in the area, besides the base behind me. The arms depot is lit up like a carnival. They’ve got plenty of extra Manna to keep the WormLights bright so they won’t miss whatever I take.

  My feet pitter patter like a mouse as I scamper. I’ve always made more use of my new strength, but I’m also incredibly agile. The Beast was virtually undetectable when he was following me around Los Angeles, and I can move just like him.

  Better even, because I can manipulate my sense of time to give me the chance to carefully choose the softest landing spot for each and every step. The downside is that it is painfully boring to live like that. It takes me about 10 real minutes to make it the three miles to the fuel depot, but it feels like several hours, especially the last five minutes of the journey.

  My patience proves prudent as I manage to pick up on a sound I would have missed if time wasn’t moving so slowly. It’s a little buzz, that could just be an insect flying around my head, but it’s changing pitch weirdly, darting towards me and away quickly and methodically. I think it’s a Speedster, checking the perimeter. I freeze where I am and listen. There’s about 15 seconds of buzzing, then he finishes his rounds. I wait.

  I bend my perception of time again, this time making it fly as if somehow standing here in the darkness is thrilling and the moments are just speeding by. Ten minutes later, the buzz is back and the Speedster does another set of rounds. Ten more sped up minutes later, another check of the grounds.

  The Speedster can’t keep this up for much longer. All Speedsters lack in endurance. Even if he’s gulping down handfuls of Manna in his little breaks, he’s still going to stop and sleep. I could just wait him out.

  The thing is, that isn’t exactly uncommon knowledge. The Speedster isn’t just burning himself out like an idiot. I’m guessing they’ve worked out some sort of shift system to keep watch at night. Whenever the Speedster gets too tired, someone new will takeover, maybe another Speedster, or maybe something else entirely. I never did see a roster of who I’m going up against.

  I’d rather face off against the Devil I know than the Devil I don’t, so I get moving. I have nine minutes and fifty seconds before the Speedster does another check.

  The arms depot is an old oil refinery that was renovated to work on a much smaller scale after the Plagues. The patchwork of metal pipes and tubing was left mostly intact. Or as intact as Cabot’s bacteria left it. Bacteria need food and water just like all other living things. The food was metal but out here in the desert, the bacteria went thirsty like everything else. The metal has jagged chunks missing from what the bacteria were able to eat before they succumbed to dehydration. It looks like a giant took bites out of the metal but in reality a million microscopic creatures did the chomping.

  Cabot made a different bacterium to eat oil and other carbon rich fuel sources, and it did its job well. Gasoline was virtually wiped out from the planet leaving most vehicles useless, including army tanks and trucks.

  Slug fuel doesn’t work very well for combustion engines, something about it burning too hot and
violently, producing too much torque. In order to power their vehicles, the government has been spending endless sums of money to dig deep enough into the earth to find a place where the Plagues could not reach. Then they suck up the decayed remains of old plant life, and refine it down to gasoline.

  Arms and fuel depots like this one had to be setup all over the nation just so that Government personnel could move between the Metro Areas without relying on trains. I suppose the paranoia and seemingly wasted money was actually worth it because without those incredibly expensive trucks, the country would be totally disconnected now.

  I’m after a tanker truck full of Manna. I overhead Colonel Graves say the National Guard spotted it on a recon mission. It’s takes a lot to keep 14 Differents fed. I guess it’s only twelve now, after Larry killed the Flyer, and the National Guard killed the Athlete.

  I freeze in my tracks. There’s someone standing to my right. Must have been in the shadows and I missed him. He’s way too close. If I move, he’ll spot me for sure. My only chance is to stay still and hope he doesn’t see me. I’m right out in the open, but it is late, and maybe he’s sleepy.

  The man in the shadows heads towards me. If he spots me and sounds the alarm, the plan goes kaput and I have to fight all the Differents here. I’m not ready for that yet. I’ll have to take him out. Maybe if I can manage to cut off the flow of blood in his carotid artery, I can drop him before he makes a noise. It’s going to be tough to pull it off without breaking his neck given my huge mitts, but I have to try.

  I get ready to pounce as the man steps forward into the light. I can see in his eyes that he sees me, but they are familiar soulless eyes, a Walter. Walters can’t speak, and guard duty is probably outside the scope of their abilities, although I’m not sure about that. I would have thought shooting guns was beyond them a few days ago. I should take him out.

  But I can’t bring myself to do it. He’s not a person; not really. He’s a mindless creature wearing human skin. Without a Telepath giving it instructions, Walters can’t do anything more complicated than eating food located directly in front of them. But my brain fires off a series of complex emotional signals when I consider the prospect of snapping its neck. It feels like murder even if I know it isn’t.

  Instead I drop my jug of water and lift the hapless creature over my head and carry him over to a large rusted iron drum and drop him inside. He should be able to topple the thing over and get out, eventually. One possible alarm- sounder down, I grab my water and continue along. I’ve got to slow down and rely on my other senses; my eyes aren’t enough in these conditions.

  I actually smell the Manna from the tanker truck before I see the vehicle, even though it’s directly in front of me. The truck is in rough shape. Two of its wheels are blown, and its front axle is bent. It was dragged into place. I couldn’t do that, so the Strong-Man they’ve got is stronger than me. Good to know. All the more reason to gain hastened healing abilities.

  There’s an open hatch at the top of the truck. They’ve set up a series of pipes, which lead down to a slowly-filling tub. I take a quick moment to look, listen, and smell, but there’s nothing immediate to be concerned about. I reach down into the tub of Manna and start shoveling handfuls of the goo into my mouth.

  I turn off my taste buds, I hit my limit on the super-sweet flavor long ago, but even flavorless it is still satisfying. My body has been running short on calories for a long time. I move the Manna into my digestive track, and my body begins to process it almost immediately, assisted by insulin from my pancreas. Manna is unlike any other substance on earth, it is a complex carbohydrate that is entirely unique. It provides almost fifty times as many calories per gram as the carbohydrates found in other foods. That’s how Julia Chekov can manage to feed most of a nation on her own.

  The downside of Manna is that it contains literally no fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. Manna products were created mostly for the purpose of injecting other nutrients into the sugary Manna base. I can transition the sugars to fats, but for everything else I’ll have to make do with the tub of vitamins that the National Guard gave me. I open the package and scarf down all the tablets inside.

  Multi-vitamin tablets are not an ideal way to receive nutrients, at least for a normal person. The capsules contain many times the daily needs of most substances, including all the essential amino acids. The problem is that the capsules move through the digestive system too quickly for the body to make use of all of it. That’s why it’s best to get nutrients from natural sources in the diet. Luckily, I can slow my digestive system around the tablets, and flood my body with the vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. Considering my plan is to regrow virtually every cell I’m made of, there’s no such thing as too much nutrition.

  It doesn’t take me long to eat all the Manna in the small catch tub they set up. I move on to the pipe, sucking the Manna like through a straw. I toss the pipes aside and climb up to the access port at the top of truck. I use my arms to lower my head down the opening and start sipping down the Manna.

  After guzzling for a good while, I pick up my head. I lost track of the clock in my head, and the Speedster’s patrol started. I can hear him buzzing around and he’s closing in on me. I don’t have time to get away, and I don’t want to fight him. There is only one option. I toss my jug of water down the hole and then I manipulate myself through the hatch at the top of the truck. I have to dislocate my left shoulder in order to fit my wide frame through the hole. I drop down into the goo. It takes me a few seconds to sink into the viscous fluid.

  My feet hit the bottom of the tank with only a few inches of headroom left. I have to crane my neck up to breathe, but at least I’ll be well hidden. I try to minimize my movements and focus on my hearing to make sure the Speedster didn’t spot me. I sip away between breaths.

  The buzzing comes to a stop near the tanker and the Speedster starts poking around outside.

  “Hey Charlie!” he yells. “Get over here. Something happened with the Manna.”

  A few moments later there’s a series of footsteps. There are four people out there, including the Speedster.

  “Something ate all the Manna in the tub,” a female voice says.

  “They took out the piping too,” someone else says.

  “Most likely the local fauna. I will design a fence tonight and we can begin construction in the morning. I should have foreseen this inevitability. Apologies,” another voice says, sounds like the resident Big Brain.

  “We should just leave it out and catch whatever critter it was. I don’t care if it was just rats, I’d eat anything that isn’t Manna,” the Speedster says. At this point, I’d agree.

  The four of them spend a few more minutes discussing possible vermin deterrents before heading back to bed. Leaving me alone with nothing to do but eat and perform cellular mitosis.

  #

  That’s as far up my spinal column as I am willing to allow my new nerve cells to propagate. Any further and I’m going to start reaching my cerebellum and medulla oblongata: my brain, which as far as I’m concerned is me, although recent events have rendered that fact questionable. I don’t have the guts to try to improve my brain cells. Medical science doesn’t yet fully understand how memories and personalities are formed and neither do I. There’s no way to be certain that I’d still have my memories if I regrow the cells where they are stored. I’m too scared to try, what if my one test sample ends up destroying the memory of my mom singing the Happy Days theme song to me when I was seven.

  The downside is that means my brain is still vulnerable. It’s protected by an extra-thick skull thanks to The Beast’s bone structure, but it is still breakable, and my brain wouldn’t heal like a Regenerator’s brain. The worst thing is, I know other Regenerator’s can take head wounds and not become memory-less vegetables so there must be some way to make it work.

  I’ve turned the rest of my body into a perfect mix of The Beast and Sarah. I’m just as strong as ever, but now I can also heal a
broken bone in less than a minute. At least I will be able to do that, once I get more nutrients. Even the entire package of vitamins was far less than what I needed to regrow virtually every cell in my body.

  Thanks to a lack of nutrition I’m suffering from scurvy, rickets, anemia, goiter, and every other vitamin deficiency disease under the sun. My muscles are weak, my bones are brittle, and everything is inflamed. My nutrient deficient cells live much shorter periods of time than they should. Luckily, thanks to the Manna, I have an endless supply of calories and a rapid healing system. I can use those to quickly create new unhealthy cells to replace the dead unhealthy cells. If I couldn’t ignore the pain nerve signals from my body, I would be crippled by the agony, but instead I get to worry about the minute details of the systems of my body that are in various states of disrepair and distress. I can only imagine what I look like. I weigh about half as much as I did when I dropped into the tanker and my skin is peeling off in sheets.

  This is the best I’m going to do for now. I’m not getting any more vitamins and minerals in here, and there’s nothing else more calories can do for me. I take a few deep swigs to make sure my stomach is full of as much Manna as possible, finish off my water jug, and then I head out.

  Lifting myself out isn’t easy and the incredibly thick liquid Manna doesn’t help. I reach the rim of the opening and then I perform the slowest, most pathetic pull up since I was in 5th grade gym, and drag myself through the hole. I can do this without dislocating my shoulder again because there is so much less meat on my bones.

  It’s later in the day than I thought. I lost track of my internal clock while I was down there. The sun is starting to go down, which works to my advantage in terms of staying hidden. I can’t wait until dark though, because, thanks to vitamin deficiencies, my vision is deeply impaired. Blurs in the light of day are better than blurs in the dark.