by Jack Hamlyn
There was only one guy left in the cage that I ever talked to. His name was Gavlek. He had been in the cage as long as Jiggs. He had a bad leg and could barely stand-up.
“What do you know about the mutants?” I asked him.
“ARM is terrified of ‘em. I know that much. They use chemical weapons and they attack at night.”
I felt the spit dry up in my mouth. So that was why my dumbass guard turned white at the mention of them. That’s why they all wore gas masks on their web belts. I had the feeling that the mutants were mortal enemies of ARM, and of course, PHOBIC. Which was one in their favor, but if they used chemical weapons, we prisoners were going to be in a very ugly place without any protection.
That’s all Gavlek would say, as if the very mention of that name had somehow tainted me. Maybe it had. I already felt tainted from my brush with Spider, like I had been lifted to a higher state of consciousness. I hadn’t been, but something, some sort of awareness, had been raised in me.
Not an hour after sunset, my friend the dumbass guard and a couple of his buddies showed. They stayed outside and he came in. He got up so close to me that I could smell the liquor and tobacco on his breath, something garlicky he’d had for supper.
“Guess what, asshole,” he said, grinning. “Spider don’t need your ass after all. It’s your turn to get tapped.”
I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction he sought. I gave him nothing. “My death will be easy compared to yours. The mutants are coming. You’re going to die alone. I saw your death. It was ugly. You were vomiting out your guts.”
He turned away, shaking his head, then he grabbed me and threw me up against the wall. “I’m not listening to your lies! I’m sick of listening to them!”
“It’s too late for that,” I said. “It doesn’t fucking matter what you want. Your death is coming. You’ll die alone, your brain like putty from nerve gas. That’s how it’s going to be. I gave you a way out, only you were too much of a coward to take it.”
His face was twisted into an ugly mask. I saw it then, all the blatant, dirty evil of the human condition—the selfishness, the hate, the intolerance, all the things that made the race unworthy of survival. It was contained in the face of that one frightened little man.
“No, you’re going to die! Do you hear me?” he said, spit flying from his mouth. “They’ll tap you dry and I’ll laugh! I’ll fucking laugh when you scream and beg me to get you ought of there!” He was jabbing me in the chest with one stiff index finger by then. “And you will, oh yes, you will beg, motherfucker. You’ll beg for me to put a bullet in you, but I won’t. No, sir, I fucking won’t.”
“You’re cursed,” I said.
“I am not!” he shouted at me. I must have accidentally struck some superstitious nerve in him, some irrational terror of hexes and the like that shivered in the darkness of his small, narrow mind. “You’re cursed because you’re going to die!”
“My pain will be over, but yours will just be beginning, because the curse is on you and I can smell the stink of it. You already smell like a corpse.”
His eyes were wide. I was working him and I thought a big part of it was that I seemed so sure of myself. I spoke very calmly about his death, as if I had really seen it, which I hadn’t. He stepped back from me and brought up his hand, not to hit me, but maybe to cross himself or even throw me the sign of the evil eye, which somehow, he knew all too well. But he did neither.
“Get him out of here,” he told the other two.
They started dragging me off and as they did, I told him how he was going to die, how the zombies would take him and eat him piece by piece. He raged and I laughed at him. I had utterly nothing to lose. Cowering and begging for my life wouldn’t have done me one damn bit of good. My fate was sealed, as they say.
“You think I’m full of shit?” I said to him. “Well, guess again. I have what Spider has. I can see it all now. They’re coming, the ones who’ll sack this camp.”
I was laying it on thick.
But something I was saying was working, because even the two guards had stopped now. They looked unsure. In fact, they looked very unsure. They were waiting for their boss to tell them what to do, but he was confused and uncertain. They looked from him to me, him to me. They weren’t certain what to make of any of this.
“You have one chance, one little chance. All of you. Set me and the girl loose and you can survive this. It’s your only way out.”
“Take him,” my boy said.
But they didn’t.
They never had the chance.
MUTANTS
A series of explosions rocked the compound. They went off like chain lightning. WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP-WHUMP! The ground shook and balls of fire rose above the buildings. We were being shelled. Mortars were dropping into the compound and not from one location, I thought, but from at least two or three. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Men were shrieking and crying out as more of them came down. The Quonset was hit and part of it collapsed. Fire licked at it. I saw a couple soldiers in the distance running for cover. Then there was an explosion, an eruption of earth and fire, and they were just…gone.
I heard vehicles starting to roll. The compound had two LAV-25s and they were heading out to suppress our attackers with their chain guns. The explosions were devastating, fire blazing in every direction, clouds of acrid black smoke blowing through the compound.
The two guards who were dragging me off ran away, fumbling their gas masks on.
By firelight, I saw a figure rise up from behind some wreckage. It was vaguely human…but there was something distorted and grotesque about it at the same time. That might have been the effect of the bulky chemical warfare suit it wore, the hood and gas mask with the central forward breathing canister. The firelight made the ballistic eye lenses shine like the eyes of a huge insect. A mutant. They struck absolute fear in the ARM boys. The figure carried an AK-47. It opened up with a couple of well-directed short bursts and both of the guards went down shrieking. It fired at them again and then was gone.
My dumbass guard ran off, trying to pull his mask on.
I got back in the cage. “We’re under attack! Make your run for it!” I told them. “It’s your only chance!”
I didn’t know whether they were listening or not and I didn’t have time to find out. I had to move. The compound was under siege and I was in as much danger as anyone. I had two choices: run from the compound or stay and look for Robin. But if I did that, I was going to need a gas mask right away.
I couldn’t abandon Robin.
No way in hell.
In the confusion, I figured I had a chance. There were explosions and the sound of heavy machine guns firing, automatic rifles clattering. Lots of cries of pain and screams of rage. The compound generator was down, what electrical lights there were—mostly along the fence and skirting the buildings—were down, too. I merged with the shadows, going to ground as ARM soldiers ran about, putting up their defense and the attackers, limned by firelight, darted around, opening up with their AKs and laying down a considerable volume of fire before fading back into the night. It was absolute pandemonium. With the shadows, the smoke, the flaming wreckage, it would have been impossible to know who or what to shoot at. But the shooting went on and on.
I crept across the compound, keeping to the fronts of the cages. Most of them were still locked. I had no way to break them open. If things worked out, I figured, I’d come back with a weapon and do it later.
I hit the dirt as an LAV-25 came roaring within feet of me. It was firing its fifty cal at pockets of shadow, suppressing the mutants. I crawled away until I was near the burning wreckage of the Quonset where Spider had given me that serious mind-fucking which I now equated with the psychic version of gang-rape.
A group of six or seven ARM troopers rushed past me.
Then one of the LAV-25s rolled up.
A security contingent of three soldiers came out of another Quonset to the rear. Spider was walking with them. They su
rrounded him, trying to keep him safe. If I had had a weapon, I would have wasted them all. I had a mad, overwhelming desire to beat Spider to the ground and then slide a rifle bayonet through his throat…or maybe right through his black beating heart.
Revenge fantasy, sure, but I had a feeling we’d meet again.
Right then, he was a rat fleeing a sinking ship.
He was screaming out orders to his security squad as they made their way to the LAV-25. I could feel his mind sweeping the compound. I could feel the heat of it. It was everywhere. You couldn’t hide from it.
He knows, I thought. He knows exactly where I am. He can sense me out here and if he wanted, he could rip my mind apart.
But if he intended to do that, he didn’t. He was otherwise occupied with saving his own miserable hide. He was brought over to the LAV-25 and I heard it moving off. I felt his mind again, searching, and the sense I got from it was one of pure terror. The mutants. They terrified him, absolutely terrified him. And I knew why. PHOBIC could not control them, they could not penetrate their minds.
Score one for the mutants.
I watched the LAV-25 drive away. It must have pissed-off Spider to no end to leave all his yummy human livestock behind.
A barrage landed seconds later as I ran off. I was clear of it, but the impact shook the ground under my feet and the shock wave picked me up and threw me. I landed in a patch of weeds. White lights danced before my eyes as I tried to stand. I went right back down. The wind was knocked out of me. Knocked? Hell, it was punched. I waited there on my knees, gasping. It felt like everything inside me was loose like potatoes rolling around in the bed of a farm truck.
I saw a few shapes gliding through the night, sharp and fast like knife blades. Mutants. I was certain of it. They were dressed in black and olive drab chemical suits. They all carried AKs, grenade pouches, and what looked like grenade launchers. One of them stopped and looked in my direction. The eye lenses shined like mirrors.
A few seconds later, I saw another form limned in the firelight: this one was not stealthy or fast. It was slow and shambling. A stench of old death came off it like a breeze from an open grave. A zombie. I saw another and another. Things were even more risky now. Either one of the barrages had blasted open the zombie corral, or ARM had opened it on purpose to create a diversion or confusion.
I heard screams in the night that were very human and very pained. Then something worse…a shrill whirring sort of sound like a grasshopper makes. No zombie I had ever heard made a sound like that. It had to be the voice of a mutant. It was horrible.
Regardless, it got me motivated. I had to get to Robin. But I had to do it carefully. The night was a dangerous place. I crawled through the weeds on my belly like a commando, keeping a very low profile. I heard more sounds. The fighting was still going on and a few mortars landed around the compound perimeter, lighting up the night. Machine guns were still firing, engines roaring, small arms fire exchanged. There was a sudden resounding explosion and I think a vehicle went up. I kept moving. I saw a few more stray zombies out on the prowl. I knew I had to come up with something. Time was running out. Once I got to the womens’ cages, how the hell was I going to open them?
A voice in the distance shrieked, “GAS! GAS! GASSSSSSSS!”
More men were screaming now. I heard the hollow thumping of gas shells exploding. My time was running out and I knew it. I was already imagining the expanding clouds of Sarin and VX nerve gas, blister agents like phosgene and chlorine that would literally peel the skin from my body.
I saw a couple of ARM boys fitted with masks. They set-up a .30 cal. machine gun. They were both wearing night-vision devices. They scanned the darkness, picking out the mutants apparently and opening up on them. They were very businesslike, professional. They fired in short devastating bursts, knocking down their enemies. As I watched, they packed up their weapon and moved to a new vantage point.
I kept imagining that I smelled weird chemical vapors that burned my nose when I breathed. I think it was all in my head, but it scared me. Back in my Army days, I had been trained in NBC—Nuclear, Biological, Chemical—warfare. What to do, how to do it. Even then, wearing those hot suits and masks with limited visibility made you claustrophobic. I knew damn well you couldn’t fight an extended battle wearing that stuff, especially not where we were going in the desert. None of that seemed to be a limiting factor for the mutants. They moved quickly, killed and disappeared, and then reappeared out of the shadows to kill again.
I moved off and came to a knot of three dead ARM soldiers. They hadn’t died from gas, I didn’t think. What I could see of them, they weren’t even wearing their masks. They had been shot, then hacked up. I searched around for their weapons, but I couldn’t find anything but a knife. I took that and one mask that wasn’t covered in gore.
I slipped off into the darker shadows to put it on. It had been awhile, but it all came back to me. It was the M-40 version that I’d trained on. I went through the procedure I had been drilled on. We were supposed to be able to do it in nine seconds or risk contamination. I loosened all the harness straps. I put the face-piece over my face, sticking my chin in the pocket. I tightened the harness straps until it fit snugly. I covered the outlet valve with one hand and exhaled sharply so the air escaped around the edges of the face-piece. Then I covered the inlet port with my free hand and breathed in. The mask suctioned to my face. It was air tight. I had accomplished it pretty good in the dark, but it probably took me a good minute or more to do it.
I was as safe as I could be.
It wouldn’t do any good against blister agents, but at least I didn’t have to worry about nerve gas which had to be one of the most horrible things ever conceived by man.
Behind me, something moved.
I froze, just waiting for death to come down on me. I heard the sound of breathing. I was sure of it…a moist, rattling, almost phlegmy sort of breathing. I stayed where I was. I did not dare move. The sound of breathing coming from chemical masks is often somewhat disturbing and that’s what I was hearing, only worse. Very liquid-sounding. I had a mad desire to call out, “Who’s there?” like some dummy in an old movie, but I knew better.
I waited.
I heard quiet, stealthy footsteps. The hairs at the nape of my neck stood on end. I didn’t dare so much as breathe. I gripped the knife in my hand. I heard the footsteps again. They were closer, much closer. Sweat ran down the bridge of my nose inside the mask. I had a crazy image in my head that it was the dead soldiers, reanimated by Necrophage, but I could not see them and they were not moving. The footsteps got nearer. I tensed. I thought, in my fear, that they were creeping up on me to kill me. If it had been ARM, they would have simply opened up. I didn’t know who or what it was.
Then I saw them: mutants.
They were sweeping stealthily through the compound. They had long bayonets fixed to the barrels of their AKs. They saw the ARM bodies and instantly set on them, making those shrill noises. They stabbed their bayonets into them again and again. I waited, knife in my hand, listening to the awful sound of it.
I waited until they moved off.
At that precise moment, the fighting further back in the compound heated up. There were a series of explosions that shook the ground, each one like a flashbulb going off. I caught site of the compound far beyond the Quonsets. It was limned brightly on my retina: the shattered buildings, scurrying forms, clouds of smoke and gas drifting about. I heard men crying out, screaming. Small arms fire. Heavy machine guns rattling with a constant staccato. More explosions. The thumping of gas grenades. This was how the mutants did it. They hit a camp with mortars, laying down high-explosive and incendiary rounds. Then they charged in, shooting and hacking. Then came the gas shells, probably delivered by mortar tubes and the grenade launchers of the mutants themselves. That, in conjunction with the nerve agents and chlorine gas, created pandemonium and confusion. Only the most highly-disciplined troops could have held it together against that sort o
f terror.
I looked away.
The afterimages of the explosions were burned onto my eye. I heard movement again and smelled something horrible—not the gangrenous stench of the walking dead, but something I could only acquaint with the musty, moist stink of rotting linen.
There were a few more explosions.
In the flickering light, I saw the twisted corpse of a mutant. It had been hit multiple times, most of its head blasted away. It appeared to be ripped wide open…but no, that wasn’t exactly it. It was not ripped, but split as if it had been filled with helium until it burst its seams. What had come out was not blood, but bubbling white goo like raw bread dough and a dusting of yellow powder. And the smell…horrid.
The physical revulsion I felt was limitless.
I couldn’t take it. I honestly couldn’t take it. I jumped to my feet and ran. I had to.
H&K MP-5 Submachine Gun
Type: 9mm Parabellum Full-Auto
Kill Range: 200 yards
Magazine: 30 rounds
COMRADE IN ARMS
I needed a weapon and I didn’t have time to be choosy about how I got it.
I saw a soldier. In the flickering firelight, I saw he wore the shadow-pattern Russian camouflage that ARM favored. He was the one I wanted. He was waiting there by a tree, looking confused and scared. He was my target. I crept up on him quietly. He was crouching down, hoping to keep out of the action. He was exactly what I was looking for.
I got closer and closer.
When I was maybe six or seven feet from him, I rose up quietly. I hated to do what I had to do. He looked scared and with good reason. But there was no point in feeling any sympathy because not a single ARM puke in the compound had shown me any sympathy. I came at him quick before he could react. I slipped my arm around his throat, gripping my wrist with my other hand, pressing my forearm right into his Adam’s apple. He dropped his rifle, struggling, fighting, but I had him and I wasn’t about to let him go. His struggles weakened and he made a gurgling sound and went limp in my arms. I held him for a few moments to make sure he wasn’t faking.