"You not coming with us?" He asked Tom, "do you know where we are?"
"No, buddy, looks like they'll need to check that you and mum are okay before they let you further into Sydney," Tom replied.
He was struggling to find the words that would describe what's going to happen in the most simple way a young teenager would understand.
"You know how they used to put cats and dogs arriving from overseas into quarantine for a bit, to make sure they don't bring some foreign bugs into the country? This one is something like that." That was as good an explanation as Tom could manage to produce at the moment.
Jason nodded. Tom suddenly felt a knot in his throat, making it harder to talk.
"You and mum will be fine, these people are friends. They'll patch me up at the next stop and I'll come see you as soon as I can," he meant every word, "is that cool? Hey, I might even get you a DPF pass into our shooting range!"
"Yeah," said Jason, "it's cool."
He leaned further in and gave Tom a really tight slightly awkward hug. Tom hugged Jason back with one arm. The knot in his throat has gotten bigger, and his vision suddenly went blurry.
"You know, a promise is a promise!" Michelle gave Tom a quick smile, looking at him over her shoulder, as her and Jason were exiting the helicopter. Tom smiled back a her. And then they were gone.
Metal door was shut once again, engine revved up, and the flying machine took off, carrying Tom to his next destination.
"Sydney DPF labs, next stop." Sergeant looked noticeably more relaxed now.
Civilians were extra responsibility, whether he wanted to admit it or not, and now being on their own, surrounded just by military people who could speak more clearly and not use fancy words, was a relief for him.
"Demons messed you up pretty bad," he said, looking at Tom more seriously.
"What's with my ETA?" Tom asked one of the medics inspecting him earlier, "she was buggy since the last firefight we got into, and then went offline completely."
"Can't tell, Sir," medic was a young girl who must have just been fresh out of training, thrown into the field with the rest of new recruits, "diagnostics shows it offline, I couldn't log in..."
There were only four of them in the helicopter now - medic, Sergeant, pilot in the cockpit, and himself, still lying on the stretcher that they've put for him right on the floor. The gunship was not one of those more comfortable medical transports that were equipped with emergency beds, but had more armor and firepower that Tom preferred right now to the missing extra comfort.
"Didn't think you guys would fly that far from city defenses," Tom finally had a moment to fully process what happened to him. Military wasn't flying anymore unless they really needed to, and even as an agent in need, he would hardly call himself an important asset to warrant risky extraction like this, "I thought holos would shoot you from the sky."
"So did we, man," said Sergeant, "read the orders and was like - WHAT the faarrk?"
"Orders are orders though," he continued, "received signal from Central, priority extraction, blah blah, up we went..."
"Pfft, why would they decide to risk you to extract me?" Tom was actually enjoying the conversation with one of the people he could be more honest with, "and who notified Central where I was?"
"No idea, mate," Sergeant couldn't have known all the details, Tom realised. He was just a guy in charge of the extraction bird that was grounded for months, with clear orders in front of him.
"We saw some patrolling holos on the radar not far from Sydney," Sergeant was keen to share more of his morning adventures, "but they showed no interest in us - we just flew past them, didn't even have to shoot! Weird, huh?"
It was weird. All of it.
Tom couldn't wait to get to DPF for debrief and hear more pieces of information that might help him put the whole picture together. At the moment not much was making sense, starting with Betty, and finishing here, on the helicopter stretcher.
They flew for another quarter of an hour, circling around the city perimeter and now approaching it from the South, heading towards Botany Bay. This was where some of the few remaining heli-carrier ships were moored close to the shore. What was left of Australian Navy didn't set sail far from the shore these days, much like the Air Force with their careful flying patterns. Heavily armed cruisers and carriers were now often used as military and DPF housing, stationary fortifications, staying anchored in one spot for a long time.
Tom was told that DPF debrief and repair will happen at a lab located on one of those floating fortresses. He thought that Central probably chose the more isolated and protected location for a reason that should help explain the rest of the odd events he's been caught in.
Finally the helicopter touched down yet again.
"End of the line, please disembark in orderly fashion." Sergeant tried to be funny. The whole extraction flight must have made his day, if not the whole week.
Tom wasn't surprised as he could imagine rather boring service routine for those stationed behind the walls the whole time, for months. He didn't have this problem in his field of outer wasteland duty, but there evidently were others.
The doors opened, more people in military and medical uniforms piled in. They lifted Tom up carefully, and transferred him on another rolling stretcher outside. He took a deep breath and enjoyed the fresh smell of salty sea air. They were on the top landing deck of a huge military vessel, so big that he couldn't feel the waves rocking it at all. It felt like they were on solid ground again.
A couple of guards and the medic from the chopper rolled his stretcher quickly across the deck, so Tom only had a few moments to enjoy the view outside. The deck was filled with personnel attending to their own duties, a forklift was moving some boxes in the background, a couple of other stationary helicopters looked firmly planted a dozen meters away too.
They entered a riveted steel corridor that would presumably take them to the repair lab. Tom had visited one of similar military ships in the past, and wasn't too surprised or curious about what was going on around him. It felt normal, standard part of life in the Navy, now servicing the whole Botany Bay and Brighton Le Sands area as protection and the main hub, re-routing local communications to other areas of the old Sydney.
"They'll need to patch you up first, before debrief," medic girl told him as she paced quickly to his left, "I'll hand over all the data we've collected on the pickup spot. Standard procedure, don't worry."
Tom wasn't worried, at least about none of this.
And then he heard Betty's voice.
"Hello again, Thomas."
Chapter 10
The moment she spoke in his ear after what felt like ages of silence, Tom could immediately tell that something was wrong. It was still Betty's voice, but it sounded somehow closer, as if a real person moved right next to his ear to whisper a secret.
Betty was always an implant, deep in his ear canal, intercepting and sending signals directly to his ear drum, linked to his optic nerves and brain. But she never felt like a foreign object before, until now. Tom felt presence of another living and thinking entity inside his head, a sickening feeling one would struggle to describe, and he couldn't tell if was actually real, or just a side effect of his toxin suppressing injections wearing off.
"We are finally together." Betty said weirdly.
"I thought you'd notice when they planted you in my head!" Tom tried to stay cynically cheerful, hoping it will all explain itself in a second, but starting to feel that the chances of that happening were slim. Medic girl heard him mutter something to himself, now looking worried.
"It's different now." Betty didn't sound like her normal self. She was not using her standard vocabulary, that Tom had plenty of time to get used to, even with all the intelligent programming that allowed Betty sound more human and random in the past. Tom felt cold chills down his spine.
"I will explain more later," Betty continued, "but now I have to do a few things. You can watch, if you like."
Before Tom could comprehend what the broken piece of electronics was talking about, he suddenly felt losing control over his whole body, as if someone flicked an invisible switch. He was able to see right in front of him, where his head was currently turned, but couldn't move a muscle, not even close his eyes. He tried to let out a scream to warn the guards pushing his stretcher along, but no sound came out of his closed mouth.
Then he saw himself sitting up on the moving stretcher, to the surprise and visible confusion among those escorting him. Tom heard the medic girl say something, but the external sounds came into his ear muffled, so he didn't understand a word. His body turned to the side suddenly, with one arm reaching out and pulling handgun from the holster of the closest guard.
He couldn't feel his body or arms, but was surprised how snappy and rapid the whole movement was, considering his heavily injured condition. The whole scene unfolding in front of him was surreal, like he was watching a first-person shooter video-game on a screen, with someone else is playing it.
BOOM-BOOM!
His right arm extended in front of him and shot both confused guards point blank. His brain definitely didn't give the order to do that.
"NNNOOOO! RUUUUNNN!" Tom silently shouted at the medic girl in terror, but already knew that the words were not audible to anyone around him.
She acted like she heard him though, trying to run back up the long corridor, to the outer deck, horrified. Tom saw his left arm extending after her, as if it was long enough to grab the girl who was already a few meters away. And then something else happened, but this time he could feel it.
It felt like he himself was part of an invisible force that was like a rubber band connected to the young woman running away to safety. He felt pulling that she tried to apply with her body weight, as well as some elasticity of their connection, that was definitely there.
"This one is ours too," Betty commented in his ear, "do you like her? We like her."
The invisible rubber band that extended from Tom to the running medic, suddenly pulled the girl back with what felt like instant enormous application of force, ripping whatever it attached itself to out of the falling medic's body. He felt the invisible elastic tentacle retracting, and being sucked back into him, or whatever his old body was now hosting.
The girl collapsed on the metal floor, looking instantly dead.
Tom screamed again, feeling completely helpless and terrified, for the first time in his life to this extent. A second later, he would have jumped in sudden shock if he still had control of his body. Dead medic girl in front of them started slowly getting up from the floor. She turned her head and looked at Tom, smiling in a weirdly exaggerated, almost grotesque way.
She looked just like she did a few minutes ago, with her clothing appearing maybe a bit less neat, but he could tell that something else was behind her green eyes now. And it was looking straight into his own.
"You are smart, Thomas, you are catching up fast," the new Betty sounded like she was giving Tom a moment to figure things out for himself, before explaining anything, "let's go outside, get some fresh air."
"Possession! Betty is a demon possessing people!" Tom came to the only conclusion that all the facts were pointing at, as he walked along side medic girl up the corridor back towards the exit to the landing deck of the ship.
"How long have you been like this?" Tom tried to talk to the demon inside him now, "are you even Betty?"
"Okay I withdraw my comment about you being smart, Thomas," the voice inside his head sounded sarcastic, "isn't it obvious that Betty was dead since the moment you were hit by a flying charger you people call holos? I'm just using her voice because I liked it from the beginning."
They stepped back onto brightly lit landing deck of the ship out of the corridor that now appeared quite dark to Tom's eyes. It was still just as busy as it was a minute ago, with people minding their business, going around them with a sense of purpose, not alerted by anything yet.
"Let's stay close to this wall for a second." Demon inside his head continued narrating, as if Tom had any part to play in this weird theatrical scene that kept playing in front of his eyes, whether he liked it or not.
With the corner of his eye Tom caught the sight of his left arm extending to the side, pointing at something that wasn't in his field of view. Then his head was turned to the left, and he saw what got Demon's attention. One of the battleship gun turrets at the very edge of the deck. There were a few of those, planted along both sides of the vessel.
Turrets appeared to have full rotational freedom of 360 degrees, each one equipped with variety of long and short range guns, full extent of which Tom certainly didn't know.
Another invisible tentacle extended towards the turret, making Tom feel the cold surface of thick metal it was made of. The tentacle effortlessly penetrated deeper, wrapping around the whole rotational hull and filling in the space inside, like some kind of a hose, now injecting hollow turret with their demonic essence.
At that point Tom thought he knew what's going to happen next, and he wasn't wrong.
The unmanned empty turret powered up on its own, slowly rotating to point its guns at the deck full of people and landed aircraft. It was clear that the guards started noticing what was going on. A second later loud ship alarm sounded right next to them, deafening Tom a little bit, but his demon-controlled body didn't move an inch, still staying close to the steel corridor entrance they've just exited.
People were running next to them, paying no attention to the real source of trouble, all eyes on the malfunctioning turret, that now appeared to be operating autonomously.
Another second had passed in slow-motion for Tom, and then the turret opened storm of fire upon everyone and everything on the ship's deck, instantly blowing up most of its targets into pieces of meat and exploding metal. The air got filled with screams of burning people being torn apart with high caliber turret auto-fire, with nothing anyone could do to stop the armored part of the ship, built to withstand substantial punishment and protect the vessel it was planted on.
As Tom's demon was possessing the turret, and killing everyone on deck, medic girl was busy too. Tom lost sight of her, mesmerised by the horror unleashed with the help of his body, but then realised that she was back again, standing right next to him. And it looked like she brought more friends, surrounded by a few more possessed guards.
"We are spreading fast," Demon in his head broke the silence again, "I had to get rid of these, as we don't need them to fly. In the end, it's for your own good."
Tom felt like his soul was tortured, witnessing all the destruction and possession around him, not being able to do anything other than keep watching. He was a prisoner locked in his own mind, next to a window with a view outside, that he couldn't shut or turn away from.
"They will sink your ship from the shore in seconds," Tom yelled inside his head at the demon driving his body, "do you think all this blasting hasn't been noticed yet?!"
"Oh, they noticed," Demon sounded dead calm and still fully in control of the situation around them, "except we are just a small piece of a much bigger puzzle that you don't see yet."
"Coast guard is already ours," Demon continued, "and our attack is simultaneous in different areas. You are not the only host that brought us inside the perimeter. I'm sorry if this makes you feel less special."
Tom knew it was impossible to negotiate or reason with possessing demon, at least not yet. Maybe there was still a bigger role for him to play in this, otherwise why did demon keep his conscience alive still? The number of questions was growing, but the demon didn't seem to be in a hurry to answer any of those yet.
Tom's head turned, looking away from the dark and surprisingly quiet shoreline, now facing the ocean on the other side of their vessel. Wind was getting stronger, no longer just a sea breeze that he enjoyed exiting the helicopter.
Suddenly he heard a different female voice, faintly resonating in his jail cell of a demon-occupied mind.
Her conscience must have been alive, just like his own, trapped inside the body that didn't belong to her anymore. But how could she hear him, and were their demonic occupants listening into this conversation? More questions.
"Hey... Hey!" Tom decided to reply and see what happens, "yes, I can hear you!"
He heard the sigh of relief and sobbing of the girl on the other side. She heard him too. Tom wanted to keep talking to her, asking questions, but decided to wait until she calms down first.
He was just happy that he wasn't completely alone in this.
Tom's demon remained silent.
About the Author
Malcolm Yard is an Australian novelist who enjoys writing Sci-Fi Action and Post-Apocalyptic Survival stories.
Mal served in the Military for many years, then immigrating and changing careers to help people find their own effective professional path, becoming a trainer and coach.
Mal is a single dad living in Sydney with his son Thomas, and cat Lord Varis.
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Hostseeker: Survive Demonic Apocalypse Page 7