Inside the coffin lay the body of Trevor Stone. His skin not decayed, not blotched, and not running but clean and clear without a blemish to be seen. His eyes closed peacefully, his hair combed perfectly, his strong hands still crossed across his chest.
"My God, Doctor," Gordon spoke first. "What the Hell did you use to embalm him?"
Maple swallowed hard and admitted, "We didn't embalm him…"
…From each of the sick round spheres lying on the soft forest floor sprouted a trio of sharp and boney protrusions. They hinged at an unseen joint and returned to the ground, stabbing into the mush there. At the center of each creature rose a glowing orb alongside a fleshy cylinder that sat on a tendon-like shoulder.
The creatures—both of them—rose five feet in the air…
…Odin stood still between the two Dark Wolves commandos with his curly tail rigidly held aloft and the fur of his mane standing like porcupine prickles. A scent carried through the air to his snout; a scent of death and decay different from the cemetery's stench. He had not smelled that particular aroma in many years.
Odin growled and turned his eyes toward the line of trees to their right. Something wicked approached…
…"I did not embalm the body. I was told only to stitch the wound."
The flashlight—propped on the casket—shined on the perfectly preserved remains of Trevor Stone.
Nina insisted, "Doctor, someone did something to him. I'm just saying, dead bodies don't hold up like this."
Before she even finished, Gordon pulled a hunting knife and drew it across the dead man's tunic. The fabric tore, revealing somewhat scorched skin beneath a row of stitches running from his upper chest to his stomach.
"That's where the blast was," Maple explained. "A terrible wound. He was certainly hit by one of the alien energy rifles."
"I see," Gordon mumbled.
Nina acted on a hunch. She carefully reached toward the dead man's face and, after a moment of hesitation, lifted the eyelids. Two intact eyes with no sign of rot stared out with a glossy glimmer; the pupils dilated not too much, not too little.
A soft gasp escaped her lips.
Knox grabbed the bag in Maple's hand and shoved it against his chest.
"Cut him, Doctor."
"I can't do a proper autopsy here. I can barely see!"
"I don't think you're going to have to dig very deep. Now cut him."
The doctor did as instructed. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves then pulled a scalpel from his bag and went to work releasing the stitches. They snapped apart one after another.
Nina curled her nose and sniffed the air. Her eyes danced around as her mind drew a conclusion.
"Do you smell that?"
Her question pulled Knox from observing the doctor's work. "Huh? What? Smell what?"
"That's what I mean," she answered. "Look, there should be a smell. He's cutting open the chest and there's no smell. No dead smell, no body smell. Nothing."
"No," Gordon corrected. "There is a smell. Almost sweet. Not the smell of a dead body. Something different. Very strange."
Maple finished re-opening the wound and hesitated.
"Go ahead, doctor," Knox said. "Do your job."
Maple huffed and examined the contents of the corpse. He first bent back the perfectly intact rib cage.
"Interesting. These bones are…well they're almost rubbery. Not so much bone. More like tissue. There's also a lot of blood down here."
Gordon said, "You mean coagulated blood."
"No, very much a liquid."
Nina stood on her toes to peer over his shoulder but lost her nerve. Instead of watching she asked, "Well? What do you see?"
"Internal organs," Maple answered.
"No kidding," she hissed. "But do you see any problems?"
"The lungs, the liver, the heart, all are in perfect condition."
Nina asked, "I mean, do you see anything unusual?"
Knox repeated the doctor's words, "Perfect condition."
"Yes," Maple's voice wavered, suspicious of his own conclusions. "Perfect condition."
"They shouldn't be in perfect condition, Doctor," said Knox. "They should be decomposing, rotting away. The blood should not be flowing around in there, it should be dried and dead. His eyes should be rolled, his skin sagging. Why isn't it, Doctor? Why?"
For a few moments, the doctor's professional curiosity swept aside his circumstance. He spoke as if he might be in a laboratory at work, studying a specimen.
"No rigor mortis. No decay. But yet…"
Knox pounced, "What?"
"The organs. Everything is exactly where it should be. No settling. The body has not lost any cohesion. It's not right."
Nina's eyes widened and she pushed herself between the doctor and Knox. She saw the carved open chest of the body that appeared to belong to Trevor Stone. In the hole there she saw globs of pink and splashes of red.
She said, "You're saying that this is not Trevor Stone."
"What?" Maple gasped.
"It's a fake."
Knox scratched his chin and echoed, "A fake? Interesting thought, Captain."
"Impossible," Maple decreed meekly. "I mean, everything looks exactly as it should."
"Yes," Nina's mind buzzed. "It's too perfect. Look, I mean, you said it yourself. All the organs are intact, there's no decay, it looks like a human body but it was never alive so it could not rot to begin with. This isn't Trevor Stone."
The assumption left Knox befuddled, one of the few times in his life.
"That makes no sense. There's no logic to it. Evan assassinated Trevor Stone. What would he have to gain by a fake body?"
Maple stumbled, "But who could do such a thing? This is not some sort of Hollywood special effect. These organs look exactly as they should; the glands, the blood vessels…everything is straight from a text book."
"But never any life," Nina knew the answer as if by instinct. "Just a prop. Just enough so that if you didn't look too close you'd think he was dead. Listen, this changes everything."
The grave robbers heard the sound of Odin barking fiercely….
…They came from the tree line, two monsters each with a yellow light for a face sitting at the nexus of three bony green legs. They moved forward methodically, closing toward the violated crypt.
Odin stood next to a marble angel and barked. Oliver and Carl raised their weapons. The creatures marched across the open as if unafraid of any human defense.
Nina and Gordon with Maple in tow burst out from the tomb, no longer concerned with the security trip wire. As they moved from the damp, cool confines of the grave and into the oppressive heat of the July night, the creatures began their attack.
A fleshy tube-like weapon alongside the glowing head fired from a clock-like face of holes, one after another. Deadly pellets sought out the three who exited the mausoleum. Nina pushed Maple to a sitting position behind a sturdy grave marker, then rolled to the grassy ground with her weapon ready. Knox took position behind one of the fake pillars—more sculpture than support—at the front of the crypt and readied his own nickel-plated automatic.
The Dark Wolves fired at their assailants. The creatures seemed to not even notice the bullets and continued their approach.
"What the Hell are these things?" Carl Bly shouted as he let fly another three-round burst.
Oliver added his firepower to Bly's and assured, "Easy chap, we'll put them down."
The approaching horrors fired again, this time with far more accuracy. A series of shots not only hit one of the tomb's fake pillars where Knox stood, but literally ripped away the stone there. It exploded off the façade in big dusty chunks, chasing Knox from that spot to a more concealed position behind the crypt.
Another volley aimed for and disintegrated the gravestone behind which Nina had placed Maple. The marker blasted away from top to bottom, becoming nothing but powder floating away on a summer night's breeze. Maple tried to flee as his protection evaporated. The powerful pro
jectiles punched through his hide and did to his body what they had done to the tombstone.
"No! No!"
Nina's shouts could not stop the doctor's destruction and her well-aimed bullets that hit the attacker did not dissuade its assault. Indeed, like the other shots flying in the monsters' direction the creature did not even feel the impact. It just moved forward, alongside its partner, and strolled in for the kill; to silence those who had learned the truth.
"We can't hold these things!"
Nina agreed with Carl but a glance at her watch told her that they must hold these things for another two minutes.
She found an anti-personnel grenade on her battle suit, pulled the pin and threw it toward the approaching danger. The explosive detonated between the two creatures, showering them with shrapnel. They wobbled in response to the deadly rain, halting their approach briefly. But as the shrapnel faded so did their hesitation. The creatures marched forward again, thirty yards and closing, their strange weapons firing and forcing Nina to seek new cover further away.
Maddock followed his Captain's lead, using the M203 launcher on the barrel of his weapon to lob another explosive grenade at their assailants. This one hit directly beneath one of the things and detonated, peppering the undercarriage of the monster, causing it to hop, but any damage remained light. It strutted forward on its tripod of legs, firing in flashes that brought light to the lightless meadow of headstones.
Knox popped out from behind the mausoleum, held his pistol in both hands, and fired in heavy thunder claps at the creatures now twenty yards away. His addition to the fight only brought unwanted attention. A flurry of alien pellets whizzed by his head. He dove to the ground and rolled between rows of markers, the tops of which were torn away by pursuing fire.
Odin barked and ran to Nina's side as she knelt and squeezed more shots from a fresh magazine.
Oliver Maddock reloaded his M203 launcher and caused another delay in the monsters' approach when the projectile exploded. A very brief delay.
"We need to fall back!" Carl spoke the obvious.
Nina objected, "We have to get the body! Listen! We have to take it with us."
Knox ran to her position, grabbed her arm, and pulled her in retreat saying, "Forget the body! Fall back!"
Carl Bly stood with a grenade in hand. A series of shots hit the tombstone he used for cover, pushing through the granite and hitting him. He managed to toss the explosive but with much less strength than intended. It stopped far shy of its target and exploded harmlessly.
Maddock hooked an arm around his friend's waist and dragged him off at a fast limp.
"We can't move fast enough!" Knox shouted.
"Leave me," Bly said.
"Not a chance, buttie," Maddock insisted with a touch of Welsh slang. "Now shush your noise."
Knox, however, appeared to be right. The four people and their dog retreated down an open hill face among row after row of monuments to people long past. Those same monuments proved an obstacle for the three-legged pursuers, causing them to step daintily between statues and tombstones. Nonetheless, they gained ground and their deadly projectiles came closer and closer to hitting another mark.
Nina turned and fired again, kneeling behind a wide grave marker. Alien rounds chipped away at that stone fast. She consulted her watch, and then turned a hopeful eye toward the sky.
"C'mon, c'mon, don't be late."
A swoosh of air and flashes of searching spotlights announced the arrival of Shepherd's contribution to the team as Eagle One roared in over the slope of the hill with the twin plasma cannons under its triangular nose firing flame-like bursts of energy at the aliens.
The expert pilot flew the craft with precision, swinging its back end around toward a suitable landing position while the turret-mounted guns under the nose cone stayed locked on target. The blasts from the ship's guns obliterated stones, spat earth and grass into the sky, and forced the hideous guardians to halt their pursuit. In turn, the strange pellets from those animals took aim at the aircraft, punching divots in its hard hull in a series of clings, clangs, and dings.
Hauser lowered the Eagle between the attackers and the escaping team, opening the starboard side door from his position in the pilot's seat. The bright light of the passenger module cast a glow over the grassy hillside.
Nina entered last, covering Maddock and Knox as they helped the injured Bly inside. Odin—in a running leap—jumped up and in.
The Eagle's powerful main guns managed to blast off one of the creatures' legs, but could not destroy them; their hides appeared much stronger than their spindly frames suggested. Still, they could not advance into that fire and they could not stop the Eagle from lifting off and away from the grounds of St. Mary's cemetery.
Inside the passenger compartment, attention turned first to Bly. Blood oozed from his side. They laid him on one of the bench seats and removed his clothing to assess the damage.
"Got right through your armor, mate," Maddock said.
"Yeah—ouch—and through a tombstone on the way there—argh—too."
Nina told him, "Good thing, too. Goddamn tombstone saved your sorry ass. But look, it's bleeding pretty good. You need to see a doctor."
"Yeah, and we lost ours," Knox said.
Nina computed quickly. "Okay, listen. We'll stop at one of the hospitals down town and get him to emergency. Maybe we can get him patched up and out again without too many questions."
Knox shook his head, "No way around this, Captain. We've got to toughen up and keep moving. Those things weren't there by accident and I'm guessing Internal Security and who-knows who else will be all over us real soon. But there are more things to consider."
Nina turned to him with angry eyes. She would not leave comrades behind. She would not let Bly bleed to death.
Gordon, however, gave her reason to reconsider: "They're going to know we saw the body. They're going to figure out how close we are to figuring this all out. They're going to start covering their tracks; erasing everything. We have to move fast, Captain. Remember that promise you made to Ashley."
Her brow furled. She did not like lectures.
"He's right," Bly spat between grunts of pain. "Just drop me off and you keep going. Cap, you gotta find out what is going on."
"I'll stick with this one," Maddock volunteered. "Maybe we can get in and get out of the hospital quick. But you're gunna have to move a shade faster, methinks."
Knox grabbed Nina's arm so as to grab her attention. "Let them go, Captain. You have a mission to complete."
"W-what? Where? We have everything."
"No, we don't. There's a lot more to do. More places to go."
"Like where?"
"Someone went to a lot of trouble to make it look like the Redcoats flew all the way up here to kill Trevor Stone. They then made sure those assassins got shot down and then put together a fake body. That means there's still another place to look for answers."
"I don't follow you."
"Come on, who could do this? Think. A body that was not a body. Something that resembled a living thing but was never alive. And those things that attacked us. Where have you seen something similar?"
"I-I don't remember them. I've never seen anything quite like them."
"Get out the hostiles database, Captain. Page through it. Go back to the first edition, when the illustrations were sketches by Anita Nehru. What did they look like? Whose work did they resemble?"
Her eyes widened as realization hit home.
He told her, "There's one more place we have to look for answers. One more place to check before we can be sure."
She answered, "The Redcoat base. In Mexico."
"We have to be sure that they were the fall guys. If I'm right," Gordon let go her arm and his eyes grew tight, "then Evan has been a bigger fool than I thought possible. He's made a deal with the devil and our time is running out."
"What are you two talking about?" Bly interrupted from his position on the bench seat where o
ne hand held a wad of gauze to a bloody wound.
Gordon warned, "There's someone pulling the strings in all this. Someone we haven't heard from in a long, long time."
19. Fly on the Wall
"Danny! Danny, run!"
Too late.
The expanding vortex enveloped Washburn and his team. Trevor heard Danny’s confused voice over the radio, barely audible beneath the moaning, crying maelstrom.
"Wh-what? What is this?"
Stone watched his friend warp and stretch…
"What is this? Oh God, Trevor! Help us!"
…and disappear into Hell….
"What is this place? It hurts! TREVOR! HELP US FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! YOU CAN’T LEAVE US! TREVOR! HELP ME! HELP ME! WHAT ARE THESE THINGS? GET OFF OF ME! GET OFF! OH GOD OHGODOHGOD…"
The vortex collapsed and disappeared, its shriek silenced. The radio frequency cut.
The cold snow of a December afternoon fell fast so as to fill the wide round crater where a part of the Earth had once been.
Another victim of Armageddon with one difference: this one had been sent—ordered—to his doom by Trevor Stone.
I could have waited a while longer; could have observed the gate more. I could have sent in Stonewall's relief force. Why didn't I do that? Did Danny really have to die?
Trevor watched the spinning vortex engulf his friend again. He heard the pleading for help once more. And then he saw…
…Beautiful golden fields surrounded New Winnabow. Beautiful golden fields of tall grass sloping up to meet the woodlands.
Beyond Armageddon IV: Schism Page 32