by Lucas Cole
“A deal?”
“My word.”
He puts a wad of weed into his mouth. “Now we wait.”
“Yes.” I move the rifle aside. The glow of the twin suns is lighting the horizon. “It won’t be long.”
“Chew?” He offers me some of the weed granules.
“Why not?” I take a small pinch and feel it sting the side of my tongue. My face flushes and my pulse rises. “What did you do before the mine explosions?”
“Waste material and dining hall superintendent.”
“Food in and waste out, eh?”
“Yes.” And he returns my smile. “You might say that. We cannot all be heroes…engineers, soldiers. Some of us are mere laborers.”
Klaus is, at heart, a humble fellow. Who would have guessed?
Silence falls upon us and we watch and wait, taking turns with the binoculars. Klaus is the first to spot them coming. He picks up his telecom and reports.
A moment later, Peter marches Todd and Self, their hands manacled behind them, to a clearing in the ruined camp and makes them sit in the dirt. He starts to walks back to where his men lie—about twenty in all.
On the other side of the ruins, a large group of reds, perhaps forty or fifty, stiffly make their way to the crest of a dune and down the other side toward camp. They are armed with every manner of cutting and stabbing tool: machetes, spears, crude swords fashioned from metal bars. A figure in a red jacket precedes them.
Before Peter can reach his men, Klaus says, “The two in the building.”
My rifle is resting on the tripod attached to the barrel. Stabilized, the weapon is easy to swing from side to side, covering the width of the camp. I sight through the scope and find the face of one of the deadheads rising from one of the ruin rooms. I squeeze the trigger and POM—the rifle emits a sound and the red soldier’s head explodes into blood and brains. A fresh kill, I think absently, before swinging the sight to the adjacent room, capturing the other man in my scope’s circle just as he raises his pistol and POM—his neck erupts in an explosion that sends his head to bounce out of sight.
I look past the scope and see Peter running, dodging, reaching his men who have their weapons aimed at the charging reds.
Spangler, his drawn sword glinting, his red coat flapping brightly, leads his men. He fearlessly approaches the two humans who are now, hands manacled behind them, trying to propel themselves backward in the dirt with their feet, vainly trying to escape the sword of the Red King as he raises it over them. There is something odd about Spangler’s appearance and I try to focus on his face, but things are happening too quickly.
“Reds coming from holes west and east flanks. Our men don’t see them.” Peter and his men hold their fire, as they were instructed, waiting for clear targets.
I sight on Spangler and pull the trigger. POM—and Spangler’s chest explodes. I swing the rifle west and sight on the two reds clambering out from their hole. I fire and a lucky shot explodes both of their heads with a single round. Black dust settles over their headless bodies.
“East hole. East!”
My scope whirls dizzily to my left, past the red-coated Spangler who is miraculously rising to his feet and raising his sword—past him to the two deadheads who, armed with pistols, are now firing upon Peter and his men.
“They have pistols!” I shout unnecessarily.
Shaken by the sight of the risen Spangler, I fire and miss, the ground erupting into a small cloud beside the firing reds. I fire again. The .50 cal makes three more rapid POM sounds and tears the arm off one of the reds and shatters the head of the other. I fire again…this time another head shot; a plume of black dust spews into the air and settles over the corpses. I swing the sight back to Spangler in time to see the fall of his sword. Blood spurts from Todd’s cleaved skull. Self already lies dead, his decapitated head beside him. I raise the sight, find Spangler’s head, and fire. Like a swarm of insects erupting from a hive, Spangler’s cranium spews a roiling cloud of gray and black matter, then he topples to the ground in a heap beside his victims.
A fusillade of shots erupts from below. Peter’s men have opened fire and the result is devastating to the reds. Flashes from the impact of the bullets pock the chest and torso of the attacking army. Peter’s men fire again and heads explodes in multiple puffs of red, black, brown, and gray clouds. Headless corpses fall or stumble over fallen comrades. Still, the remaining reds charge. More shots, more reds fall. Some, now, begin to run in the other direction and are mowed down by weapon fire. An explosion rips the ground and scatters body parts into the air; Peter has fired the M16/203 grenade launcher.
“The reds will soon be extinct,” I say.
“Ah, but so will you,” a voice clogged with anger and hatred shouts and the bright flash of a sword swoops down.
Klaus, with faster reflexes than I could have predicted, leaps up at the attacker—and receives the full blow of the blade. It must have been the use of the tea weed that rendered so much fresh blood as it spews from Klaus’ cleaved skull.
Spangler wrenches his sword free and kicks Klaus’ body, his hand still grasping my binoculars—over the ledge. Spangler, his red coat absent, his eyes bulging in his lust for revenge, slashes the sword down against the rifle barrel I have swung up toward him. Sparks flash as metal strikes metal, then Spangler, with a twist of his blade, deftly slings the rifle from my grasp. Rather than pull the pistol he has stuffed into his belt, he raises his sword for the coup-de-grace.
He must not have seen my shoulder holster or my .45 or he would have crept up behind me and simply shot me where I lay. I pull the weapon and shoot him in the chest. Smoke curls lazily from the hole in his shirt, then the blood comes. But he will not die easily. He charges with sword upraised and I fire again. And again. He collapses beside me, then, incredibly, pushes himself to his knees, blood streaming from his wounds and from his mouth.
Rolling away from him, I get myself on my feet and face him. He manages to stand, supporting himself with his sword, his back to the cliff edge.
“Fooled you, eh?” He raises his sword futilely and admires the blade. “Have two of these. A set, don’t you know. Given to me…given…by the Governor of Tibur. You were just a Captain, then.” He drops the sword and falls backward into space.
Poor Klaus lies scattered among the sharp rocks at the cliff base. His torso and extremities were torn asunder during the fall, but his head seems strangely intact where it lies leaning against a boulder. Klaus’ one eye stares at me and I wonder for a moment if he somehow still lives, despite the decapitation. But closer inspection reveals the absent posterior of his skull, the cranium shattered, a mixture of brown dust and intact brain tissue extruding through the hole.
On the off-chance that the binoculars landed safely in the sand, I scout around and find them shattered against the rocks. A hoarse whistling sound leads me around the rocks to find Eric Spangler lying slumped against the cliff wall and miraculously still breathing.
The whistling sounds are coming, not from his mouth, but from the gaping hole in his chest wall where a rib has protruded. A pink frothy fluid bubbles out with each breath. His ruined left leg is bent under him at an odd angle, bright arterial blood pumping from his thigh where the bone has pierced through his pants leg.
Most of his face is missing—the tissue macerated—his once-human features resembling a mass of raw hamburger. Dark blossoms of blood spread from the bullet holes on his shirt. This is one tough man to kill.
I crouch down in front of him. “I’m sorry.” He was an amazing man, in a way. “I can’t save you. There’s too much bleeding.”
He grimaces horribly—and I realize he’s trying to smile. “I only regret that I will not leave behind a more handsome corpse.” He laughs, then coughs up a gout of blood. “Listen—don’t let Todd prevail. Don’t let him…win.”
“Todd is dead. So is his security man. Your impersonator took care of that before I could stop him.”
Spangler trie
s to laugh, but chokes on more blood. He clears his mouth. “Ahh, look what you’ve done to me, Major.” His head slumps forward on his chest.
I push his head back to clear his airway, in the process getting blood and clotting tissue all over my hand. I wipe it onto Spangler’s sleeve. “Colonel! Tell me where Kimbrough’s legs are. Where did you hide them?”
His eye peeks forth from his devastated face. “Take care of my troops; they were once men. Better men than you.”
“I will—but on one condition. Kimbrough’s legs.”
He whispers and I cannot make out what he is saying. I lean forward and he grabs me by the collar and pulls me close to his grotesque face. “Stored them…in the kitchen. One of the lockers…” And with his last breath, he hawks up blood and saliva and spits into my face.
I pull back, cursing the Colonel and wiping the slime from my face. “Damn you!” But damned as he likely is, he does not respond. He is dead.
Go to Beginning
CHAPTER XXII
Ambition
We lost six men, reducing our blue army to fourteen, not counting Peter who survived without a scratch. Of the six who died the final death, one had been Spencer. He of the filed teeth and red shock of hair. Another was Taggert, the ungainly monstrous lieutenant whom, despite his monstrous appearance, I had come to like.
The blues collect the weapons of their fallen comrades and, perhaps a first for these creatures, they bury their fallen in a row of graves, there among the ruins. There are no prayers and I actually wish Gershom were there to say something. Finally, Peter and I depart. The rest of his soldiers lag behind as they strip weapons and boots from the fallen reds.
The heavy .50 caliber rifle I carry weighs heavy upon my shoulder as we trudge side-by-side. The Red Brigade is no more. “Your men performed well, Peter.”
“Yes. They did. Like real men.”
“Believe it or not, I will miss Taggert.”
“Yes. He was a good man. He was my friend.”
“Suppose they were men, again. Would they still be willing to mine the ore? Allow the so-called deadhead state to exist while they mined, to have the added strength and the ability to withstand the effects of ore exposure?”
“No. Not if they could be cured of…this.” He holds out his claw-like hand.
“I see.” Then, a complete cure will not be forthcoming, I decide. In time, yes. But not until the ore is mined. “Well, we can, at least try to harvest and care for the tea weed as best we can. Until a cure is developed. Meanwhile, we may as well mine the ore to pay for better living conditions. Don’t you think?” But he does not respond, just looks off to the horizon, his dark eyes revealing nothing of what he thinks or feels.
My plans still whirl in my head. The Station A personnel will not dare to fight us. Between Professor Zuckerman and Dr. Kimbrough, a treatment—under my direction—might be developed for the Abe virus. Mary will help me build better, more proficient reactors. Ore production and refinery will skyrocket and I will be awarded the title to the planet…a planet that, with the help of Carly, can be resurrected. Resurrection Planet.
“Imagine, Peter, trees growing, green valleys where once only the dunes commanded the surface. You and I can bring about fantastic change, we can transform this world and resurrect this dying planet.” I start to say more, but I am stopped and—I admit—shamed by the request this part-man, part-zombie makes.
“Your plans are important, Major,” Peter says. “Beneficial to us all, in spite of your obvious personal ambitions. But for now, let us have silence. Out of respect for the dead.”
So I walk silently beside this creature, man, monster, who sees fit to lecture me about respect for the dead. Forget it, I tell myself. Bide your time. I breathe deeply—and the smell, no—the fragrance—of Sybaris lifts me. Ahh, I think. There’s more to this planet than meets the eye. Profit. Power, maybe. Even beauty. I look at Peter chugging along through the sand, his mind on his fallen compatriots. A piece of skin falls from his chin, unnoticed. Horror.
Beauty and horror. As I told you.
xxx
Go to Beginning
AFTERWORD
The “facts” behind the fiction involved in this novel were derived from actual studies described in issues of “Science.” Researchers described the intentional drowning of spiders to the point of apparent death and then the successful resuscitation of the spiders hours later through various means. Did that make these tiny research subjects “zombie spiders?” I’ll let you decide. As for survival techniques among plant life, these also can approach the bizarre and were also documented in various “Science” reports. Some survival mechanisms came close to describing what would seem to be intelligence among our vegetative neighbors. Regarding Abe and his postmortem examination: the techniques and findings were based upon actual autopsy results, history of disease processes, and changes that occur after death. Finally, the “Old Earth” devastation described by Major Crisp was inspired by “the Seven Trumpet” judgments as noted in the Biblical Book of Revelation…with my projection of the judgments coming in the form of nuclear warfare. Thank you for purchasing this book. Please stop by with comments or questions.—Lucas Cole
www.lucascole.com
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