The Never Army

by Hodges, T. Ellery

  Collin saw Bodhi’s cam slow to a stop. He was about halfway up a pine and had just disabled his gleamers so he could crouch on one of tree’s thicker branches.

  “I’ve got a visual,” Bodhi said. “Big fella, Red. He’s up a tree. Looks like he’s doing a lot of sniffing.”

  “Sit tight, I’m almost dere,” Beo said.

  “Yeah,” Bodhi said, his voice shrinking to a softer whisper, “No worries on—Dammit.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Think he smelled me,” Bodhi said. “Cause he is looking right at me.”

  “Is he moving on you?” Jonathan asked.

  “No, just staring, he—” Bodhi was quiet for a moment. “Crap, I blinked and he ghosted me.”

  “What?” Beo asked.

  “I . . . I blinked and he was gone,” Bodhi said.

  “Collin, you catch it on the body cams?” Jonathan asked.

  Collin had seen the same as Bodhi, but it happened so fast that he wasn’t sure. “One second. Replaying it. Gonna slow it down.”

  “I can still feel it,” Bodhi said. “It’s moving toward me real slow.”

  “Not liking this,” Perth said. “Them wanks never been sneaky. Our boy is up to something.”

  “Beo, how far out are you?” Jonathan asked.

  “Twenty seconds,” Beo said; he was moving fast now, no longer worried about making noise. They could all hear the exertion in his voice.

  “Don’t like this, I can hear the bastard breathing, still can’t see him,” Bodhi said.

  “Crap, crap, crap!” Collin’s voice was panicked. “You didn’t blink, Red just pulled some Predator bullshit.”

  There was a second’s delay before Jonathan and everyone else caught Collin’s meaning. “Bodhi, move!”

  “East, turn east,” Collin’s voice yelled through the earpiece.

  Wet mud shot out in heaps when Jonathan planted his feet and changed course. As he sprinted through the forest, he could hear the groan of trees and breaking of branches being caused by the Ferox’s pursuit of Bodhi long before he finally caught sight of them.

  Well—he caught sight of Bodhi.

  Gleaming through the branches the kid made it look like surfing. Still, one slip and the Ferox trailing him was going to hit like an invisible wreaking ball. The general location of the Red wasn’t difficult to infer. In this much foliage, he could see the disturbance of something huge and unseen as it stampeded after Bodhi through the forest.

  Beo wasn’t far behind, but the man was built like a tank, not nearly as agile or quick; he wasn’t going to catch up before Bodhi was in trouble. Normally, Jonathan wouldn’t worry about Bodhi holding his own against a Ferox long enough for them to reach him, but not being able to see where a predator’s claws and teeth were striking could end things real quick.

  “Bodhi, turn hard left,” Jonathan said already changing his own course to intercept them.

  Bodhi did as he was told, giving up a precious bit of his lead to make the turn, but the giant mass hurtling through the branches hadn’t expected it. Caught off guard, the invisible beast under corrected, slamming into the trunk of a tree. The pine whined, then let out a loud crack as it split, the top half breaking free with a long groan as it came crashing down.

  As Jonathan rapidly closed on them, he kept one eye on his footing and the other on tracking the exact moment his path would cross with Bodhi’s. “When I tell you, make a hard stop, jack up the repulsion on your gloves and turn them on the bastard.”

  “Um . . .” Bodhi’s voice sounded like he understood but wasn’t loving the plan. To be fair, they had never tried turning the gleamers on a living thing in motion, and Jonathan wouldn’t want to be the one doing an exploratory exercise with a Ferox barreling at him either.

  “Trust me, use your implant’s instincts and he’ll never touch you,” Jonathan said, taking a few last steps. “Now!”

  Hovering across a branch, Bodhi made an about-face. His back was put on a collision course with the tree, as he gritted his teeth and turned all his strength over to holding the repulsive force of the gleamers behind him. He came to a stop an inch from the trunk, and with no time to spare he dialed the gleamers to full strength and let his mental compass guide his hands toward the signal torpedoing at him.

  He braced himself as he began to feel the weight push back at him.

  Just as his alien instinct told him he was about to be crushed, the air rippled in front of him. Light bent in strange waves as the camouflage keeping the Ferox’s body cloaked passed through the gleamers’ repulsion field. A thin layer of gel undulated, revealing the red and black skin of a claw as the substance retreated up the Ferox’s arm.

  In those milliseconds the Red’s momentum was slowed—as though it passed through air that had grown as thick as honey. The Ferox was too heavy, had too much forward momentum—it wasn’t enough to stop it. As the Red’s arm became visible, it reached for Bodhi as though intent on palming his skull into the trunk. Bodhi was pinned between the opposing forces of the tree and the Ferox. The pine swayed backward through the tree line.

  Suddenly, all the force from the Ferox disappeared. With nothing pressing on the gleamers, Bodhi stumbled forward off balance. The tree, no longer being pushed began to sway back to its normal position.

  Jonathan collided with the Red midair, the armored plating on his forearm a shield in front of him as he collided with its abdomen. The Ferox buckled around him as he shot through the field of Bodhi’s gleamers. The gel that was responsible for the Red’s cloaking snapped back into place over its exposed arm as soon as they were clear of the repulsion field.

  The Ferox itself was blindsided. When they came crashing to the ground the Red took the brunt, hardly aware of what had happened when Jonathan dropped clear. Given the difficult terrain, he did the best he could to land on his feet, but the invisible shape tore end over end through dirt, roots, and mud ripping a path through the undergrowth.

  Whatever was keeping the Ferox transparent, it couldn’t deal with so much mud coating its exterior. Even in the dark, Jonathan could now make out its contours as it tried to get up. He reached back with both hands and freed two cartridges from the rear of his belt.

  “Eyes and ears everyone,” he warned over the comm, as he pulled pins from canisters and tossed them in the dirt in front of the Ferox.

  He stood and spun, putting a tree between him and the Ferox as it staggered onto hands and knees. He dropped down in a ball, clenched his eyes shut and pressed his gloves to his ears. The Ferox, having barely gotten to all fours, looked about disoriented, still trying to locate the boulder that had collided with it a moment earlier. Finally, the muddy outline of its head seemed to focus on the smoke pillar coming from the two metal canisters resting on the ground between its hands.

  Two loud pops rang out through the trees, night suddenly turning to day in their little leg of the forest, and the Ferox roared in shock. Those who had enough warning to protect their eyes and ears from the flash bombs couldn’t see the mud covered Feroxian shape rear back and scream as its claws reached for its eyes.

  In his normal human state, the blast wouldn’t have been a picnic, but with his implant active and his eyes and ears protected, Jonathan came away unaffected. He stepped out of the trees to find the Ferox’s mud-covered outline reeling backward, losing its balance as it blindly tripped over obstacles on the forest floor.

  He stepped into range and clocked the stunned Ferox across the jaw hard enough to knock it off its feet and bounce its head off the forest floor.

  “Perth, Beo, how far out?” Jonathan asked.

  Flailing, the Red struck out wildly, diving in the direction it had been attacked, but Jonathan knew better than to hold still. He easily got behind the deaf blind beast and yanked its footing out from under it.

  “Right behind ya,” Beo said.

  Oddly, Jonathan no longer needed to be told this, he noticed that the cloak the Ferox was using allowed him to see completely thro
ugh much of it. He could see Beo hurtling out of the trees toward him through the beast’s chest cavity.

  “Saw the light,” River’s voice said over the radio.

  “Same, far more helpful than Collin’s directions,” Perth added.

  Jonathan grabbed hold of the Ferox at the wrist as it blindly tried to get to its feet, then used the leverage to bend its arm such that the Ferox’s transparent face went back into the dirt. A moment later, as it tried to raise out of the hold, Jonathan thrust his fist down into the back of its head.

  He pulled the punch.

  He needed the beast incapacitated, not injured beyond usefulness.

  The Red screamed in agony when he struck, and Jonathan and Beo were able to make out the muddy outline of its other arm. With Jonathan holding it pinned, Beo was quick to get its free arm under control.

  That was when they got their second surprise of the evening.

  Two fissures of thick green gas erupted out of the monster’s back, bursting out of the camouflage in a steady stream that engulfed Jonathan’s face as it passed. Despite being caught off guard, Jonathan kept his hold on the Ferox.

  He began hacking up the green gas on instinct. The stuff had a chemical taste and smell—nothing he recognized.

  “Beo, get clear, now!” Jonathan yelled, still coughing. “Everyone, pull back, we got an unknown weapon in the air.”

  He didn’t let the Ferox capitalize on their surprise, not giving it any room to wiggle free even when Beo dropped his hold on its arm. The gas was no longer pouring from its back. It seemed to have exhausted its payload in those two simultaneous bursts. Unfortunately, it was already spreading visibly through the air. Rapidly thinning from the condensed green into an expanding cloud. The process was happening so quickly he was barely able to yell for Beo to get clear before losing sight of the man a few yards into the gas.

  He had already done the math.

  Whatever the hell this stuff was, he’d inhaled it in its condensed form. If it was poison, some sort of nasty biological weapon, then the damage was already done. Beo had gotten away quickly, but the man had been too close, had been moving through the cloud before he got to safety. If this stuff was toxic, he doubted the man had escaped what was coming, but his exposure was far less than Jonathan’s.

  For now, Jonathan didn’t feel anything. He’d only started coughing the stuff up because it had been thick in his lungs. So far, the gas tasted awful, but wasn’t even stinging his eyes or burning his skin.

  He may not know what the gas was meant to do, but he didn’t plan to keep standing in it. He slammed the Ferox back down, wrenching its arm back harder than he’d planned to, until he felt its internal skeleton start to bend. As it screamed, still in blind agony, he took hold of its other wrist, and used the limb to swing it off the ground and into the woods.

  He immediately followed, and strangely it was when he was clear of the densest part of the green cloud—just having landed beside the injured Ferox—that he burst into flames.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  HE PANICKED FOR a moment, staggered back, only to realize he wasn’t in pain. Activated, the heat barely bothered him. His body wasn’t what was on fire, it was his jacket that had burst into flames.

  He preferred not being on fire, so he ripped the coat off and threw it to the ground. That was when he noticed something else. He was covered in what felt like hot heavy sludge. The stuff was black and silver, running down his arms and back, but it didn’t seem to be hurting him in any way that a shower couldn’t fix.

  He had to put the sludge on the back burner a bit longer. While it seemed harmless for the time being, the Ferox was getting its vision back. Well, at least it wasn’t tripping over the larger obstacles any longer.

  “I’m clear of the gas, have you got my position,” Jonathan asked as he swept the creature’s legs out from under it. The Red’s translucent form hit the ground, roaring as it fell onto the side of its already injured arm.

  “You’d be surprised how easy it is to find a man on fire in the middle of the night,” Perth said.

  He had his boot to the back of the monster’s neck when Beo came out of the forest. Bodhi came gliding down out of the trees a moment later. He noticed then that they all looked at him with a sort of disbelief. At first, he thought it was the sludge dripping off him, but that would have been a different sort of stare.

  No, this was more the sort of look Steve Irwin got while wrestling an alligator. He’d never really had an audience before, and he hadn’t thought about it. To them, it must have seemed like he was tossing these monsters about like it was so ordinary a day he didn’t even think he’d been in danger.

  Even now, Jonathan handled the creature, with all its strength and flailing for freedom, like he was dealing with a child’s temper tantrum. He realized that it wasn’t so long ago that had he seen someone doing the same, he’d have looked at them the way they now stared at him.

  “Beo,” Jonathan said, snapping the big man out of it.

  The big man shook himself a bit and moved quickly to grab the beast’s good arm again. He restrained it by pulling the limb straight and putting his boot into the Red’s armpit. The Ferox thrashed about, but whenever it made an attempt to free the limb and plant its arm, Jonathan gave it a warning tug on the leathery appendage of its ear. It was a bit more of a challenge while it remained cloaked, and had he not moved quickly, the Red’s jaws would have closed on his hand like a bear trap.

  Half blind, breathing like it had just run a marathon, the Ferox seemed to be gaining back enough wherewithal to see its struggling was only burning its energy. That sort of restraint was telling, at least to Jonathan. He’d have been willing to bet that beneath the cloak, the Ferox was not just a Red, but a Red that was on the cusp of transitioning to Alpha.

  No Ferox gave up, but the smarter ones knew when to bide their time.

  As Rivers drew close, he heard the guttural noises of the beast. He’d been told that he would need to be connected to the beast’s portal stone to comprehend those sounds. What Mr. Clean had done that allowed men with implants to understand one another required some kind of connection. Device to device, device to portal stone.

  To Rivers, the sound was that of a raging mutant bear. Only Bodhi understood the monster’s disturbing growls. The kid was gleaming against the trunk of a tree an arm’s length over the heads of the rest. Had he not been hovering an inch off the trunk’s surface he’d have looked like Spider-Man stopping to eat lunch on the side of a building.

  “Will you tell me what it says?” Rivers asked.

  Bodhi looked down at the invisible shape, its arms and legs restrained with sets of massive Borealis steel shackles. He bobbed his head back and forth and frowned as he listened. “Blah, blah, I’m honored. I’m such a threat that you sent five to battle me. Blah blah. The Pilgrimage has begun. Soon, the prophet will lead our people through the gates. Our young will inherit the Promised Land.”

  Bodhi paused, listened to a new barrage of the Ferox’s of growls, then smirked, and shot a thumb at Jonathan.

  “. . . and, of course, he knows who you are.”

  Jonathan didn’t react. Rivers swallowed, as he got the sense that Jonathan was so used to these creatures from another dimension knowing who he was that it had lost its novelty.

  Tibbs walked away, but Rivers overheard him as he opened a line to Mr. Clean over the comm.

  “Change in plans, acquisition came through with new tech, some sort of cloaking device. Wasn’t easy, but we locked him down. We’ll need to remove the cloak before we can extract the stone.”

  Beo looked concerned. “We got any idea what dat gas was?”

  Jonathan nodded, his expression grim. “We’ll get Mr. Clean to examine it, make sure it isn’t dangerous to us if deactivated.”

  Rivers heard more desperate growls fill the air. He turned to see Perth approaching with what could only be called a Feroxian muzzle. The Ferox clearly understood its purpose.


  “Man, he’s pissed,” Bodhi said. “Says we’re dishonoring ourselves in combat and our shame will haunt us for the rest of our lives.”

  “It still thinks it’s in combat?” Perth snorted. “Be sure to tell him how deeply sorry we are to fall short of his standards.”

  Bodhi shrugged, but repeated Perth’s words.

  Rivers had been quiet most of the time.

  Despite having been shown a Ferox in the projection chamber, he was still reeling from the entire experience. There was no doubting that the things existed, not anymore. He watched the invisible shape fighting its shackles warily, considering what the monster had said. The prophet will lead our people through the gates. Our young will inherit the Promised Land.

  He noticed Jonathan was standing a bit outside of the group. Examining what remained of his armored jacket after it burst into flames. He had a troubled look on his face as he reached into the inner lining and his hand came back covered in that thick black-silver sludge that was still steaming.

  “Dammit,” he whispered, tossing the sludge aside.

  He didn’t come back to the group right away. He walked further away to have a more private conversation with the AI.

  “Aye, boy,” Perth said, snapping his fingers up at Bodhi to get his attention back. “What it say?”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t translate,” Bodhi said. “He just thought you were agreeing with him.”

  The guttural growls continued to fill the forest. By the time Jonathan returned, his expression had become a mask. Whatever had been bothering him, he didn’t want his men to see it. Likely he hadn’t realized that Rivers was paying such close attention.

  Bodhi was watching the Ferox with something between confusion and disgust.

  “What is it?” Jonathan asked

  He shook his head. “Says the prophet has a question for the rain bringer. Something about one of ours.”

  Bodhi scoffed and tossed his hands up. “I mean, the translation is about as great as always, but I think he is trying to say it has something to do with the Slug, or the slippery one.”