Southlands

by D. J. Molles

  “Prince!” McNair’s heart inched up his throat with each beat. He brought his rifle up to a low-ready, his eyes over the top of the optic, darting back and forth through the darkness. He began to backpedal. “Prince! Give me a holler!”

  The fires in the distance twinkled.

  No…

  Something dark had passed in front of them.

  A shadow, slipping from right to left.

  McNair slapped his NVGs back over his eyes. The laser designator at the end of his rifle splashed through the woods, tracking the shadowy figure, now no longer a shadow, but a pale wraith, slipping through the trees…

  A muzzle flash.

  McNair held his breath.

  Something walloped him in the chest.

  The breath left him in a bark of panic.

  He was rocked onto his heels, stumbling. He caught his feet and dove off to the side, behind the only point of cover he had—an emaciated pine tree, no more than a foot wide.

  He coughed, cursed, and looked down at his chest.

  The round had hit his armor, but as he looked down his chin rubbed against the strap of his helmet and smarted. He touched it and winced, feeling a few puckered slashes in his skin. Damn spall had bit him.

  “McNair,” one of the gunships transmitted. “You good down there? We don’t have visual through the trees.”

  “Fuck no! He’s on me!”

  “Can you direct our fire?”

  A scattering of gunshots chewed up the side of the tree. One of them split through and sliced his right tricep. McNair yelped, then tucked in, but there just wasn’t enough room behind this tree. He had to move.

  “McNair, can you direct our fire?”

  “NO!” he shouted at them. “He’s too close! I’m gonna make a break for the pickup truck and I’ll let you know when I get in. You got any ordnance left to roast these woods? You didn’t get him last time. You didn’t get the motherfucker!”

  Some small part of McNair that had been much larger only moments ago, but which had shrunk so dramatically and in such a short amount of time, told him that perhaps he should attempt assaulting back at the man assaulting him.

  The best defense is a good offense, after all.

  But there’s also something about having seven of your friends die in rapid succession, and knowing that they were all at the hands of a single maniac, and that he was coming for you next.

  It muddled McNair’s thinking.

  It didn’t feel like there was just a man in the woods that he might shoot it out with.

  It felt like something had slipped out of hell, and all McNair wanted to do was get away from it.

  He knew he was breathing harder than he should have—hyperventilating—but he gulped those shallow breaths in, stacking air on top of air, and then he rolled and blind fired over his shoulder and then straggled to his feet and ran just like you’d expect a man to run when the hounds of hell were after him.

  ***

  Lee watched him go with malice in his eyes.

  He was rendered unrecognizable. Soot and blood had mixed to mud and masked his natural flesh, and all humanity had been stricken from his eyes.

  His back was scorched, some hair was burned.

  His lungs were ragged and he tasted blood.

  More shrapnel had found him, tattooed its way up his already-wounded thigh, some in his shoulder and back.

  The pain only drove him into darker depths.

  He ripped his way from behind the brush that he hid behind, his eyes still locked on the back of the man running from him, and he tore after that man with an animal cry that no part of his normal self would recognize, but his normal self was not present.

  He’d finally laid that ragged and war-worn piece of him aside.

  The trees cleared.

  Ahead was a technical.

  The man slammed into it. Ripped the door open.

  The gunships circled overhead.

  They wouldn’t fire, Lee was too close.

  The man spun in the seat, his rifle tangled with the steering wheel.

  Lee wanted to empty his magazine into the man’s face. But no. He couldn’t shoot the man. If the gunships saw their man die, they’d open fire on Lee.

  The man’s eyes were wide, his mouth open.

  He abandoned trying to get his rifle around, as Lee loped across the distance between them. The man’s hand went down to his side, to his pistol, but Lee speared him, hard, throwing the muzzle of his rifle right into the man’s face like he was trying to put a bayonet through his brain.

  Lee launched himself inside the cab as the man fell backward in a spurt of blood and teeth. His hand had seized on his pistol, pulling it from its holster as he backpedaled across the bench seat.

  Lee abandoned his rifle—too big to use in this space—and he ratcheted both hands down around the man’s wrist, keeping that pistol from pointing at him.

  The man reacted with shocking speed. The second Lee was latched onto his wrist, he swept one of his legs up, over Lee’s head, then straightened it against Lee’s neck and chest, locking Lee into an arm bar.

  The man’s right hand, still trying to draw that pistol. His left hand clapped over Lee’s forearms, keeping him there as his legs cinched up tight and he bucked his hips, arching his back so that Lee’s arm was being bent backwards against the elbow.

  It was going to break.

  Lee felt the structure of it straining, the pain spiking.

  Lee couldn’t hold onto the man’s wrist. He held on now only by his forefinger and middle finger. The last tips of those, sliding against sweat and dirt.

  The man hauled hard at Lee, pulling with everything he head. A great groan of effort seethed past his bloody lips.

  Lee was silent. His breath was coming in sharp, and then hissing out of his teeth. But he made no sound with his voice.

  When it happened, it was too rapid for anyone to have known what had gone down in that scrum of grunting movement and grasping fingers.

  Lee’s fingers slipped.

  As they slipped, the pistol rose out of its holster.

  Focused on that, the man let the arm bar go.

  And it all flowed rapidly from there.

  Rather than pull from the man’s grip, Lee plunged himself further into it, driving himself into the man’s legs, and rolling him up into a ball that was squished against the passenger’s side door.

  The pistol searched for a spot where it could catch Lee in the brain without also catching the man in the leg.

  Lee smashed himself down into the floorboards, because he knew which six inches he needed to gain, and taking this disadvantaged position gave him what he needed.

  He was able to thrust his left arm forward just far enough around the man’s midsection to grab a hold of the pistol, his palm over the slide.

  Lee pressed the gun away from his head.

  The gun cracked, deafening.

  Lee felt splitting pain in his shoulder.

  The slide of the pistol hadn’t cycled—Lee’s grip had kept it from chambering another round.

  Lee released it.

  The man aimed for his head again.

  Lee didn’t care—the gun was dead anyway.

  With both arms free again, Lee jammed them under the crook of the man’s knees and rammed him upward, rolling him until he was nearly upside down, his feet against the ceiling, and his head smashed up against the door.

  The man screamed, looking for an open shot on Lee.

  He didn’t even realize his gun was dead.

  Lee kept him pinned in that little ball with his left arm, and with his right he swept down and grabbed the only weaponry he had left—the knife on his belt. Then he rammed that into the man’s lower back, below the armor plates, and the man’s screams of effort turned to squeals.

  Lee stabbed him again. And again. And then tracked towards his spine, where Lee felt the knife point strike the bone, and he pried at it, struck at it, ripped at it like an animal, until he felt the b
ody go limp with paralysis or death, he didn’t know which, and didn’t care.

  It didn’t stop him. Nothing could stop him until he’d burned himself out.

  And he went on and on. He screamed now, to fill the silence that the dead man left behind, and he screamed to fill a hole in him that was gouged far deeper than the wounds he was inflicting. He screamed to exhaust himself, to purge the blackness in him that couldn’t ever be purged.

  When the blood-slicked knife caught on a bone and came out of his grip, he pulled back and began kicking. Pummeling with his feet, his boots spattering mud and blood across the windows. Trying to get at the man’s head, for reasons that he would never be able to articulate, beyond the fact that he was not himself in that moment.

  He was not anybody, or anything.

  He was just angry.

  Exhaustion, and the cramping of his legs cooled him very suddenly.

  He gasped for breath, and realized as he tried to get more air that he was sobbing, that his face was wet with blood from the man, blood from himself, and tears, and saliva that hung from his lips like a rabid dog.

  Like a primal.

  You’re done.

  You’re done.

  You’re done…

  The rotorwash outside.

  The gunships, still watching.

  He couldn’t exit the truck. But they hadn’t destroyed him yet, so they must not know that their man was dead inside. They’d only seen the two bodies get in, and probably could not differentiate between the scramble of heat signatures inside.

  Lee looked out the windshield, spitting, coughing, gasping.

  Rain slashed it, muddling his view of the outside world.

  But he thought he knew where this truck was parked.

  In the clearing through the woods. And at the end of it was the lake.

  Trembling, bleeding from a dozen wounds, and just now beginning to feel them gnawing at his nerves, Lee felt for the first time since Julia had passed in his arms, a twinge of survival instinct.

  The flesh always wants to live, even when the soul has had enough.

  Lee figured it was a coin toss.

  He figured he would let fate and the lake decide what to do with him.

  He managed to close his bloody fingers around the pickup’s shifter, and pulled it into drive. Then he let his foot fall on the accelerator, too exhausted to hold it up, too exhausted to press it down.

  He would have to swim to live.

  He would have to swim to the opposite bank.

  Shrapnel in his back.

  Gunshot wound to the shoulder.

  A ragged hole in his hip.

  And cramping all over from exertion.

  The tires thrashed over the uneven ground.

  Somewhere in the dim, rain-washed view ahead of him, he thought he saw a great dark expanse opening up for him.

  He rolled his window down.

  The rain slashed his face.

  The sound of gunships, following.

  The trees disappeared from around him.

  Just black water now.

  The lake, and fate, and a small chance.

  The truck hit the water like it might strike a smaller car at high speed. The impact slammed Lee into the steering wheel, bludgeoning his brain, and nearly knocking him out.

  The water flooded in and poured over him, and the coldness of it brought his mind back from the brink of unconsciousness.

  Let it sink.

  You have to get deeper, or the gunships will see you…

  With his window open, it didn’t take long.

  Lee let it go, holding onto the steering wheel, riding it like a roller coaster to the bottom of the lake, however deep that was, perhaps deep enough. Or perhaps not. That was in the hands of fate, or the universe, or God, if any of them happened to be watching.

  Maybe from the cold water, maybe from nerve damage, he couldn’t feel his fingers.

  He opened his eyes to the sting of cold water, and saw nothing.

  He hadn’t prepped his lungs for a big underwater swim either.

  Oh well.

  He felt around with his numb hands and when he thought he had them hooked into the window of the truck, he pulled, and he felt himself pass into open water, into nothingness, and in the darkness and the weightlessness, it might have been the vacuum of space.

  He didn’t know which way was up. He tried to decipher it. But when he pointed his head down, it looked just the same as when he pointed his head up, and he could not feel himself floating upwards or down.

  I live or die right now.

  He began to swim, not knowing if it was towards the surface.

  The surface might kill him anyways, but the surface was where the chance lay: On the surface, he would probably get shot; in the deep, he would definitely drown.

  He clawed, every stroke seeming like this would be the one where he would break the surface, but it wasn’t.

  His lungs burned. Began to seize.

  He’d rarely addressed himself to a high power, but he did at that moment.

  Not to beg for life.

  He talked to God and told him, as plain and honest as he’d ever been, If you save me, I’m going to kill a lot of people. So if you don’t believe in that shit, you should probably just let me die.

  The darkness seemed to trap him now.

  He wasn’t going to break the surface, was he?

  Live or die, right now.

  Live or die…

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ─▬▬▬─

  FORT BRAGG

  The Alpha hadn’t eaten in four days.

  It was ravenous. And so was the pack.

  It had hunted all day, and into the night, but the prey was scarce. It clawed at the Alpha’s mind that even though there were no prey in the woods, the easiest prey was most plentiful, only a short distance from them, just out of reach.

  So close, that the wind would often carry their scent to the Alpha’s nose.

  Hunger and frustration had begun to take its toll.

  The Alpha had led his pack back and forth, and back and forth. Into the woods, and then back to the place where the Easy Prey hid behind their clever defenses. And when they were back there, the Alpha would search manically along the thin sticks that hummed dangerously, looking for an opening.

  Now, he went back to that again, out of sheer habit.

  His irritable pack grumbled and snapped at each other behind him, and he picked up the pace, threading through the well-known woods, his face in the wind, huffing the scent of the Easy Prey, heading straight for them.

  When they reached the Easy Prey, the white orb in the night sky sat staring at them through the trees, but it gave them light, even though the Alpha sometimes found it unsettling.

  By the light of the orb, the Alpha could see the strands, like thick spider silk.

  The Alpha strode up to them, grunting and sniffing.

  Beyond the strands, a commotion was raging. The Easy Prey were making a surprising amount of noise. They were perturbed by something. Frightened by something. The Alpha could hear it in their voices, and smell it in their scent.

  It excited him.

  The Alpha turned a few quick circles, hooting to his packmates as they drew closer, and they got excited too. The hooting turned to barking, the noise from beyond whipping them into a terrible appetite.

  When the excitement passed, the pack was quiet, waiting.

  And in the quiet, between the bleating of the Easy Prey on the other side, the Alpha tilted its head, looking at the strands, the sticks that hummed dangerously.

  Something was off.

  They were not humming dangerously.

  The Alpha had never actually touched the sticks that hummed. But he’d seen others do it, and they had died, smoking and shrieking. He had learned from that.

  Now, decayed and reborn synapses in his brain began to fire again, re-priming themselves.

  Cause and effect.

  Extrapolation.


  The sticks hummed dangerously.

  They were dangerous when they hummed.

  They were not humming.

  Did that mean they were no longer dangerous?

  Growling low in its throat, the Alpha stepped towards the sticks and slapped them with his hand.

  They made a strange noise that made the Alpha tense, for a moment. But its hand was unhurt. The sticks were not humming dangerously. They were only vibrating noisily from his strike.

  Bolder, the Alpha grabbed the sticks, and the cross-hatched structure of the wire wall that the not-so-dangerous sticks hung on.

  Nothing. No pain.

  No danger.

  Beyond, the bleating of the Easy Prey made the Alpha’s mouth salivate and spill over his chin.

  It howled, long and loud, and its packmates howled with him.

  Then it began to climb, and in the distance, the Alpha heard the many others howling back at him.

  The Alpha had found all the prey they would need.

  And the others were coming to feed.

  ***

  “Are they fucking insane?” Peter hissed, peeking out the window, his fingers pulling the blinds away just far enough for him to see out. “They’re gonna call every goddamned primal in the state to us with all that racket!”

  Elsie crossed to the window with her stomach churning. She leaned into Peter to get a view out the window. His sweat smelled stale and stressful.

  Beyond the blinds, she saw the street, and some of the neighbors’ houses, and the neighbors coming out onto their steps, confusion in their postures. Concern. Fear.

  Still out of view, down the street, she heard a soldier on a loudspeaker: “The Blackout Plan has been activated. Please gather each member of your family and proceed to the pre-planned rally area. This is not a drill. Please comply immediately.”

  It was a script, and he began to read it again, from the top, as he’d been doing nonstop, as whatever vehicle he stood in rolled down the neighborhood streets with excruciating slowness.

  Elsie pulled away from the window, enraged to her core. “I can’t believe Angela would do this. I can’t believe she would stoop this low. She could’ve prevented all this if she’d just been willing to talk! But instead she’s going to let people die!” Elsie looked back at Peter, and then at Claire who stood beside her. “People are going to die because of this!”