Iron Mike

by Patricia Rose

  Mayhew laughed without humor. “If you mean those Bitch-Slugs, your ‘Resistance Front’ hasn’t done shit,” he snapped. “We lost three good people already, and there ain’t no way to kill those fuckers.”

  “The Resistance has killed over two dozen of them,” Kari lied easily. “You need to have the right chemical components. It’s like a recipe – you have to follow it exactly, or it doesn’t do anything to the … bitch slugs.”

  For the first time, Mayhew looked uncertain. “What’s the recipe?”

  Kari laughed out loud, the sound heavy with sarcasm. “Yeah, right!” she exclaimed. “Not until we make a deal, Mayhew.”

  Mike continued rubbing the plastic zip tie against the branch behind his back, keeping his movements small. The fire in his neck was almost unbearable, so the pain and blood oozing from the blisters on his wrists barely even penetrated. He knew he’d never be able to cut the plastic tie without a knife, but the enemy had been stupid and careless. With enough determination and lubricant, he could slip out of the binding. And when he did, he would kill every one of those bastards.

  Mayhew looked at Kari. “How about I make you the same deal I made your little boyfriend, bitch?” he leered.

  Kari smiled without humor. “Your choice,” she replied. “But then, you’ll never know for sure if I gave you the right ingredients, will you? Not until you’re buried up to your neck in Feeder and realize, oops, that one-eyed, tongueless bitch must have left out one itsy-bitsy component.”

  Mayhew scowled. “What kind of deal you want, sweet butt?”

  Mike struggled to concentrate. Something important was happening between Kari and Mayhew, and he needed to be alert and aware, not operating on fuzzy autopilot. She was manipulating the man, and Mike needed to participate, to react as Mayhew would expect. “Kari, don’t,” he croaked, making it come out as a weak, hoarse whisper. Mike smiled inwardly as he noted the infinitesimal relaxation of Mayhew’s shoulders. He hoped the other men were relaxing as well, dismissing Mike as a potential threat.

  “Safe passage for both of us. We get the bike with the sidecar, one of the jugs of fuel, half the weapons.”

  It was Mayhew’s turn to laugh. “And what even makes you think I’ll keep up my end of the deal?”

  Kari kept a straight face, pulling on every technique she’d learned in her sophomore year drama class. “Because I think, before all of this happened, you were a decent man, Mayhew,” she said quietly. “I think the invasion changed you, like it changed everyone else. I trust you to keep your word if you give it.”

  Mayhew looked at her levelly. “One bike. No sidecar, no fuel, no weapons.”

  Kari waited a long moment, and then nodded reluctantly. “Deal,” she said. As if there was a choice.

  “Deal,” Mayhew repeated. “Now, what about your recipe, Betty Crocker?”

  “You know the Flying J about eight miles west of Ashland?”

  Mayhew nodded.

  “We hid a small cache of supplies inside the store, under the counter behind the register. A copy of the recipe is in with the cache.”

  Mayhew’s eyes narrowed. “How stupid do you think I am, girl? No one hides cash anymore – it’s worthless unless you need toilet paper. You got no fucking recipe!”

  Kari shook her head resolutely, deliberately ignoring his question. “A cache of supplies, Mayhew. A stockpile, or a stash. It’s in a backpack we were taking to the National Guard facility in Charleston. That’s where we’re heading, if we get clear of you and your boys.”

  Mayhew studied her for a long moment then nodded, smiling as he lied. “Fine. We let you two go when Tommy brings that backpack to me.”

  Kari shrugged. “You trust him with a bottle of Maker’s Mark? Fine by me. We’ll wait.” She suddenly had everyone’s attention, as she had known she would.

  “Maker’s Mark?” Jimbo asked, a disbelieving hunger in his voice.

  Kari didn’t even look at him, her eyes steady on Mayhew’s. “It’s a catalyzing agent in the formula,” she said convincingly. “And, obviously, it’s hard to come by.”

  “You’re bullshitting me, sweet butt,” Mayhew said, his voice dark and menacing. “Don’t take me for a fool.”

  Kari shook her head in exasperation. “Why would I do that?” she challenged. “There’s no advantage to it. You’ll just be back here in half an hour and be more pissed off than you are now, more inclined to hurt us rather than just kill us.”

  “She’s lying,” Mike coughed, shivering violently. “There’s no recipe, no booze. There’s no fairy princess, either.”

  Kari scowled at Mike. “Don’t be a douche, Mike. If we’re dead, no one outside Kentucky will benefit from that formula. Remember who the enemy is, soldier! Mayhew and his friends might be jerks, but they’re not aliens!”

  Mike turned away, as though unable to come up with a retort. He shifted uncomfortably, and the plastic zip tie finally was finally coated with enough blood to lubricate itself off the thickest part of Mike’s wrists. It took almost more willpower than he had to wait silently while Mayhew considered his options.

  Finally, Mayhew nodded to Crank. “You and Tommy watch them,” he said. “Jimbo and me will go get that backpack.”

  As Crank nodded, Mayhew approached Kari, backing her up against the side of a rusted Ford Ranger that seemed like it hadn’t moved in a very long time. “If you’ve lied to me, sweet butt? If you try to play me for a fool? I swear to you by everything holy when I get back here, you will beg me to let you die. You understand? What lover boy went through will be Christmas morning with extra presents. I will burn your cunt so badly and so deeply with that poker you will never even think of having children. You hear me? And after a few days, or weeks, depending on how long I let you last, I’ll make sure you never have kids, because I will impale your cunt and watch you bleed to death.”

  He stared into Kari’s eyes until she looked away. She knew he meant every word of what he said.

  “She’s lying,” Mike insisted stubbornly. His body was still slumped, defeated, while he worked his way easily out of the perfunctory loops of the tow chain and began wrapping it tightly around each hand. This time, he didn’t want his blood to lubricate the garrote.

  Mayhew barely glanced at Mike. “We ain’t got nothin’ but time in this glorious new world of ours. Looks like Jimbo and me are just going to go find out then, won’t we, boy?”

  Crank took up a guard position to the side of Kari, his shotgun pointed at Mike, as Jimbo and Mayhew drove away in the jeep. There was something eerily dispassionate in his expression – in everything he’d done so far. Mike fought not to squirm impatiently. They would get one chance at this and he needed to make it count.

  “I’m tapping that,” Tommy announced, the moment the jeep was out of sight.

  Crank didn’t take his eyes off Mike as he replied in a disinterested, almost bored tone. “Might want to reconsider that, Tommy. Remember what happened to the last brother who hit one of Mayhew’s women.”

  “She ain’t his woman. He’s made no claim, and the bitch scratched my face,” Tommy argued, a slight, obnoxious whine in his voice. “Hell, he’s calling her sweet butt.”

  Crank shrugged indifferently. He glanced at Kari, but turned back to Mike almost immediately.

  Be patient, Mike cautioned himself. He’ll get distracted soon enough. Wait.

  Kari couldn’t wait. She made her move prematurely, perhaps unnerved by the conversation, perhaps too hyped on adrenaline to rein it in long enough. Either way, Tommy was barely in range of the knife when she swung, and as such her reach was long, unbalancing her. Tommy knocked her wrist away hard, and Kari cried out from the pain. Something was broken; she was certain of it. She attacked Tommy with hellcat intensity, striking him as she’d been taught, with everything in her arsenal. Tommy fought back, with no finesse, but more upper body strength and the skill and proficiency of an experienced street fighter. Mike “struggled” against invisible bonds, drawing an amused half-s
mirk from Crank.

  “A little help here, bro?” Tommy snapped, as Kari landed a roundhouse kick to his upper thigh, dropping him momentarily.

  Crank laughed, the sound like swallowing glass. “No way, man. I got guard duty. You tappin’ that is all you, brother.”

  Mike almost screamed in frustration. Of all the interbred rednecks on the entire planet, he had to get a responsible one? Really? It had already been several minutes since Mayhew and Jimbo left. In another ten minutes, they would reach the Flying J. In ten minutes and five seconds, they would be heading back in this direction. They would be furious … and deadly.

  “Let her go, ass-wipe!” Mike shouted, pushing a tone of authority into his voice. Tommy glanced back at the tone, allowing Kari a vicious jab that would have broken his windpipe if it had connected. He backhanded her across the face, sending her sprawling, and then immediately jumped on her, pinning her arms. He wouldn’t be distracted again.

  Crank, on the other hand, was still paying too much attention to Mike for him to make a move. Mike held his wrists closely together and thrashed and struggled as though in a frenzy to escape. Crank watched him for several moments before flicking his eyes back to the more interesting struggle. He was glancing away more often, but only for quick seconds at a time. What was the best way to get an enemy to ignore you?

  Fabric tore – Kari’s shirt, probably. Mike couldn’t see what was happening because Kari and Tommy were down on the ground, but he could hear the sounds of the struggle, Kari’s grunts of determination and gasps of pain as she landed and received blows. It sounded like an evenly matched wrestling competition … except Kari was fighting for her life, not a trophy.

  “Get off her, you mother-fucker!” Mike shouted, not having to feign the fury in his voice. “You stupid inbred piece-of-shit, get the fuck off of her. I am going to fucking kill you!”

  As he hoped, the more he ranted, the more confident and distracted Crank became. His glances away lasted longer and longer, his attention clearly on the rape in progress. Mike waited. Whites of their eyes, he thought bitterly, as he continued to curse and shout.

  When the moment came, it was over almost instantly. Mike uncurled the tow chain from his left hand and arm, holding it securely in his right. He leapt up and grabbed the back of Crank’s head with both hands, snapping his neck with one vicious, sudden twist. It was a much more visceral feeling to snap a man’s neck than AI Palmer had warned them in training … but otherwise, it went exactly as Palmer said it would. Crank dropped like a hot brick.

  Tommy hesitated just one second too long before turning around. In that second, the tow chain was wrapped around his neck, and Mike’s knee was in his back. As Tommy began bucking, Mike shifted position, yanking the piece of shit off of Kari and dragging him away from her. Mike quickly averted his eyes, deliberately not seeing the blood or the viscous white fluid between Kari’s legs. He dragged Tommy over to the tree line, giving Kari privacy and time to pull herself together. There, he slowly and methodically tightened the chain until he choked Tommy to death.

  It takes longer for a man to die that way than they show in the movies. It takes up to two minutes, long minutes that can stretch into days, and then another minute or so after death for all of the twitching to stop. Mike waited through all of it with grim patience. When he finally dropped the body, he turned to see Kari next to him, her shirt shredded, the zipper and front panel of her jeans torn, her face bruised and bloody. The hunting knife was in her hand.

  “Loser dropped it on the bridge,” she explained, her voice a shaky, hysterical sob. She stabbed Tommy’s body through the heart. Then she did it again, and again. When his chest was the consistency of hamburger, she left the knife sticking out of him and turned into the bushes, puking her stomach inside out.

  “We need to find ambush positions,” Mike said quietly, handing her Crank’s shotgun and removing the knife, then rolling what remained of Tommy to pull the Glock out of his waistband.

  “Or get out of here before they get back,” Kari countered, looking at their motorcycles.

  Mike was undecided. A burning sense of revenge wanted him to stay, but the logical course was to move on. They had a good ten minutes on Mayhew and Jimbo, and Mike doubted the two thugs would be willing to fight on even terms – not after checking out the Burger King that Kari had made of Tommy. Finally, reluctantly, he nodded.

  He froze when they reached their bikes. “Kari?” he asked tensely.

  “I see it,” she replied. “What the fuck is it?”

  It was a metallic orb, shaped oddly like the puzzle cube the babies liked to play with, but it was definitely no toy. It was so black and sleek it gleamed blue. It wasn’t powered like a drone – it simply floated there, between their bikes. Mike slowly reached and drew the shotgun up. There was a slight popping noise and the smell of ozone, and then Mike no longer had voluntary muscular control. The shotgun stopped moving, and Mike stood frozen – as did Kari.

  The orb moved between the two humans, its motion completely, eerily silent. Kari’s eyes were huge with terror, and Mike felt his own heart beating rapidly as well. Something niggled at the back of his brain, though, something as faint as a memory he didn’t yet have. For some reason, he relaxed, knowing this thing meant them no harm.

  The orb floated to Mike, approaching level with his neck. There was a sudden hissing sound, and the orb spat at him – a burst of cool liquid landing right on his burn wound! For an instant, there was agony as the drops of liquid touched the blistered flesh, but just as quickly, it was gone. And so was the pain – all of the pain. Mike could have sobbed with relief; he didn't realize how much exquisite discomfort he was moving under until it was, suddenly, no longer a part of him.

  Kari whimpered low in her throat as the orb approached her, level with her eyes. It didn’t spit at her as much as gently blow a waft of sweet-smelling, pink-tinted chemical toward her. She held her breath instinctively until there was no choice. She gasped in the air, her eyes wild and panicked … and then suddenly calm. The bruises and lacerations on her face began to heal themselves, as if they were flower buds opening in time-lapsed photography. The bones in her wrist knit together, healing itself in mere seconds. The pain in her eyes calmed.

  The orb bobbed away and vanished back into the trees. Both Mike and Kari could move as easily as if they’d never been immobilized.

  “What the hell was that?!” Kari yelped, staring at Mike in disbelief.

  Mike grabbed his helmet and nodded at Kari to mount her bike. “I have no idea. We can talk about it later, Kari, but we better get the hell out of here while the getting is good.”

  Kari changed her clothes quickly, leaving the despoiled garments where they dropped while Mike gathered up the supplies Mayhew and Crank had scattered. They were almost five miles away when Mayhew and Jimbo returned to the hunting cabin. Already livid at Kari's betrayal, Mayhew howled in rage at the sight of his cousin’s body. They had killed him like a dog! His neck was snapped as if Crank had never even served in Iraq, never even been a war hero at all! Mayhew sobbed for several minutes while Jimbo looked on uncomfortably.

  March 15.

  Scientist-Farmer

  Scientist-Farmer greeted Researcher-Xenohistorian politely on their second meeting. There was a tension in the air between them now, a feeling almost akin to … fear. Scientist-Farmer raised the privacy shielding around the conference room, double-checking that no inquisitive presence, no matter how psionically skilled, could penetrate the shields. When he was done, not even Shaman-Untranslatable could have entered their conversation.

  Researcher-Xenohistorian watched all of Scientist-Farmer’s preparations silently. When he completed his task, she added her own layers of impenetrable shielding. Scientist-Farmer didn’t know whether to be offended she didn’t trust him or impressed with her obvious psionic skill, so he opted for the latter.

  He assumed a corporeal form and watched as Researcher-Xenohistorian did the same. Interestingly, the
y both opted to assume human shapes.

  “When last we spoke …” Scientist-Farmer began. Researcher-Xenohistorian smiled, and suddenly, the memory was in front of both of them. They had met in the laboratory, a mere three moons ago.

  “Do you see, here?” Scientist-Farmer asked. “The youngling’s face. There is no familial resemblance, Researcher-Xenohistorian, and more so, no familial bond.”

  Researcher-Xenohistorian nodded. “I see, Scientist-Farmer,” she replied.

  “The human kit –“

  “Child.”

  “Yes, the human child. She clings to Human-Male, but she does not even … know him. I am afraid I do not understand.”

  “She is not his offspring, Scientist-Farmer. Human-Male is a juvenile, barely of mating age.”

  “That … Well! How is that possible, Researcher-Xenohistorian? I thought the human male and female were traveling with their litter to try to escape the harvesting.”

  “No, Scientist-Farmer. Only one of the children is of Human-Male’s genetic likeness, and that one is a sibling, not offspring. My conjecture is that Human-Male and his female gathered the children from the hive to take them to a place of perceived safety. The child he is holding met him only the day after harvesting began, but she feels safety in his arms she does not feel with the other humans.”

  Scientist-Farmer was stunned at the implication. Pieces started tumbling together in his minds. He found thoughts and images among Researcher-Xenohistorian’s offerings that supported his suppositions. It was beginning to make sense now, and a feeling of excitement rippled along his synapses. “So," he mused. "Human-Male is willing to die to protect a child that is not his own.”

  “It appears so,” Researcher-Xenohistorian replied, her voice painfully neutral.

  There was a long moment of silence between them.

  “Do you believe the humans are Level Eight sapients?” Scientist-Farmer finally asked, speaking the question outright.

  Researcher-Xenohistorian was no fool. “The beliefs of one individual are irrelevant,” she said stiffly.