by Mike Kraus
“I’m not surprised. I think it’s him, too.” Nancy turned to Leonard. “But how could Samuel have survived? The creatures would have torn apart every living thing. Even if they somehow missed him, how could he have gotten out here? I never saw any working vehicles at the village, and the muties that attacked that….” Nancy sputtered, nearly spitting out the word as she was reminded of the treachery of the youth that led to their capture. “That… boy’s horse. Do you really think anything at the village was left with a pulse after those things passed through?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s the best theory I’ve been able to come up with.”
Nancy shifted in her seat, looking around at the buildings that they were flying past. “Well then, screw running. The next place you see with guns, we need to load up and kill this bastard.”
“I agree, but we can’t delay getting to Alaska any longer.”
Nancy stared at Leonard, and he gulped involuntarily, almost feeling sorry for the man who her rage was directed toward. “I don’t mean we go hunt him down. But the next time he finds us—and I’m sure he’ll try again—we kill him. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry
9:43 AM, April 12, 2038
“Oh shit!” Marcus hissed, ducking below the window on the door as the source of blue light drew closer. Coming from the opposite end of the hall that Marcus had arrived from, the source was advancing in the general direction of Rachel and David, who were unaware of its presence.
Marcus glanced down at Sam, who hadn’t moved or grown more aggressive. He was still standing in front of the door with the hairs on his back raised, sensing that something was outside. Marcus thought back to the initial encounter he and Rachel had had when they’d descended into the complex, and how Sam had barely reacted to the half-mutated man who shuffled toward them, begging them to kill him. Sam’s behavior was noticeably more aggressive, but he wasn’t acting like he usually did when one of the creatures was around.
Taking a deep breath, Marcus steeled himself to burst into the hall and fire, fully expecting to face multiple creatures at the same time. He threw the door open and slid into the hall, lifting his pistol to aim at the source of the blue light. The look of determination across Marcus’s face quickly changed to a mixture of confusion and horror as he finally saw the thing standing before him.
Not dissimilar in appearance to the poor soul that Rachel had put out of its misery, the figure in front of Marcus was emaciated, glowing blue and shuffling down the hall. The figure’s eyes—Marcus couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman—were completely gone, replaced by the same silver metal that dotted the figure’s entire body. Despite the fact that the figure had the facial features of a fully transformed creature, it did not react in any aggressive way to Marcus or Sam when they stepped out into the hall.
“Hello?”
The creature’s voice betrayed it as a young woman, who spoke in a terrified whisper as she stopped, her still-functional ears operating in the corridor even while her eyes had been taken from her. Marcus froze at the sound, hesitant to shoot her. This was the second person to speak to him while still looking like one of the mutant creatures, and Marcus could hear her humanity behind her metallic face.
Turning her head, the woman spoke again, a little louder than before.
“I can hear you… please… please help me. I don’t know where I am. It’s so dark. I can’t see anything.”
Desperation clawed from the edges of the young woman’s voice; it reached out to Marcus and, against his better judgment, he lowered his pistol. While he wanted to shoot the woman, she wasn’t advancing toward him like the man before had done. Maybe she’s still in control of her body? But how? She looks worse than he did; her whole face is gone!
“What’s your name?” Marcus unconsciously spoke louder than he meant to. The woman’s head snapped around and she stared at him with the remnants of her eye sockets as she finally located where he was.
“Oh thank God!” Sounds of sobbing came from the woman as she spoke, shuffling forward and reaching out with her hands to feel in front of her. “I’m….” The woman hesitated, unsure. “I don’t know. I can’t seem to remember.”
Marcus stepped back as the woman continued forward, still wary of her intentions. If she can’t remember her name and she’s not hostile, what on earth happened to her? The blue glow given off by her outstretched arms was pale, and Marcus thought he could detect an imperceptible flicker in the light. Maybe the nanobots in her body didn’t reach critical mass?
Throwing caution to the wind, Marcus took one hand from his pistol and reached out to the woman, grasping her hand in his. The blue glow at the end of the woman’s arm instantly retreated, moving away from her hand and wrist before settling just below her elbow. Engrossed with the strange sight, Marcus didn’t notice the woman’s question until she repeated it.
“Who are you?”
Marcus looked up from the woman’s arm, directly into where her eyes used to be, before averting his gaze, overcome with sudden nausea by the sight of the silver eye sockets. “I’m Marcus. You’re safe now.”
The woman tightened her grip on Marcus’s hand in response to his statement. “Can you see? I can’t see a thing in this place. Was there a power outage? Where am I?”
The woman’s physical appearance was frightening: she had no eyes, her body was glowing, she looked like she hadn’t eaten in weeks and her entire body was tightly interwoven with the silvery metallic substance. But she sounded just like a normal person. That in itself disturbed Marcus, and he kept a tight grip on his pistol, instinctively holding it low out of the woman’s sight, even though he knew she couldn’t see anything. Marcus pulled gently on her hand, leading her back down the hall in the direction of Rachel and David, not needing his EL light to see thanks to the woman’s blue glow. Sam trotted behind the pair of them, eyeing the woman cautiously but not acting any more aggressively than he had before.
“Where are we going?” The woman didn’t struggle against Marcus, but she stumbled as she walked, as though she wasn’t completely in control of her muscles.
“To get help, hopefully.”
Distracted by the woman, Marcus didn’t notice when a light at the end of the corridor shone out from an open door. A harsh shout followed, and Marcus heard the sound of a rifle’s safety switch clicking into position.
“Get out of the way, Marcus!” Rachel was at the end of the hall, at the intersection of the office corridor and the one containing the room with Bertha. Instinctively, before he realized who the voice belonged to, Marcus raised his pistol and stood in front of the woman and Sam, letting go of her hand to shield his eyes from the light. Once he realized it was Rachel, he lowered his gun and shouted as Sam raced past him to greet Rachel.
“Get that light out of my eyes! This woman needs help!”
Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims
11:07 AM, April 12, 2038
“Damn, this is a barren wasteland.”
Leonard chuckled at Nancy’s sudden appraisal of their surroundings that followed a long period of silence. Traveling along flat, featureless highways, there was virtually nothing that marked their progress as one long mile stretched into the next. After they were well outside the city and surrounded by nothing but fields and grass, Leonard decided to risk stopping for a few moments to survey the damage to their vehicle.
Parking near an overpass for cover, he hopped out and walked quickly around the APC until he spotted a large dent in the back panel, where the armor was quite thick. In addition to a dent, the area had scorch marks on it, indicating that some type of incendiary round was used that contained fast burning phosphorus. Leonard’s quick examination of the impact site showed that, due to the armor’s thickness, the damage hadn’t penetrated more than a few millimeters.
More bothersome than the scorching—or even the fact that the bullet had impacted—was the sheer size of the impact site. Measuring
a few inches wide, Leonard couldn’t quite imagine what type of weapon had fired such a large round, nor how it could have been fired by one person. When he and Nancy had taken cover inside the store in Sioux Falls, it had sounded like a veritable cannon, though it was impossible to say with any certainty.
Nancy hopped out of the APC a moment after Leonard and joined him in looking at the impact site. Whistling softly, she brushed her hand against it, feeling the curvature of the area.
“Good thing we’re in an armored car, eh?”
Leonard nodded slowly and looked around, nervously scanning the horizon for any signs of movement. He shivered involuntarily, already feeling the effects of their northerly travel without the benefit of winter clothing.
“That thing still did a lot of damage, relatively speaking. If whoever shot that had hit the windows or the windshield, I’m pretty sure it would have gone straight through.”
“What’s with the burn marks all around it?”
“My guess is that it was some kind of incendiary round, loaded with phosphorus or something similar. It burns incredibly hot and can eat through all sorts of materials.” Leonard leaned in closer, gently touching the burn marks. “See here? Feel this area compared to another area that wasn’t hit and you’ll notice some light pitting of the metal. Whatever this APC is made of, it’s some kind of super-strong concoction of metals that can shrug off large caliber incendiary rounds with ease.”
“Well that’s good, right?”
Leonard gestured around them. “Well yes, as long as we’re in the thing.”
Suddenly unnerved by Leonard’s statement, Nancy patted his arm before hurrying back into the car. “Come on, let’s get going again. We can’t get far enough away from that city.”
Nancy got in the driver’s seat to take over for a few hours so Leonard could rest. Leonard circled around the opposite side of the APC to get into the passenger’s seat. Stopping at the rear hatch for a moment, he opened up the back of the vehicle and dug out a few bottles of water and some crackers, a simple but much welcomed meal for the drive ahead of them to the next city. After closing the rear hatch, Leonard paused for a moment, his head cocked to the side as he listened to the wind.
The distant sound of an engine was almost too quiet to be audible, but out on the open plains with the APC’s engine off, Leonard could swear that he heard it. A second later, though, the wind picked up and carried the sound away, leaving Leonard to wonder if he had truly heard anything or not. Not wanting to stand around in the open any longer, he hurried into the vehicle and closed the door, ensuring that the window was sealed shut.
“Let’s get out of here, Nancy.” Leonard tried to keep his voice calm to avoid worrying Nancy, and she didn’t seem to notice his wide-eyed stare as he considered the implications of another vehicle in their general vicinity. It can’t be a coincidence. It must be the shooter, whoever he is.
Nancy started the engine and took off down the highway, gratefully accepting a bottle of water and the occasional cracker from Leonard. He spread out a map of the area over his lap and the dashboard, looking to see if there was a way he and Nancy could maintain their direction and somehow lose the individual who now seemed to be following them.
Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry
11:15 AM, April 12, 2038
The small room containing Bertha was quickly filling up, with Rachel, David, Marcus, Sam and the mysterious woman all inside. Though Rachel had nearly taken a shot at the woman despite Marcus’s cry, she hesitated at the last moment. She and Marcus held a quick conversation while the woman listened on, then Rachel quickly led them back to Bertha’s room so that they could examine the woman in more detail.
Wearing the remnants of a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, the woman’s nearly naked body was featureless, aside from the silver metal that flowed through her like a set of misshapen daggers. Her ribs were clearly visible under her skin, and three of them on her right side had actually broken through the skin, though the white bone was covered by the silver metal. The woman’s face was equally sunken and she had just a few tangled patches of hair left, the rest having been disintegrated by the nanobots as they tore through her head.
The woman’s most striking feature was still her eyes—or, rather, the lack thereof—and Marcus kept his gaze averted from them, feeling a cold chill run down his back every time he caught a glimpse of them. Perfectly polished and reflective, the woman’s eye sockets filled Marcus with an indescribable dread that made him nervous to be in the same room with her, despite his having just helped her.
Under multiple sources of light, David and Rachel knelt on opposite sides of the woman, who they had told to lie down on a pair of jackets spread out on the cold floor. Marcus kept his distance, distracting himself from David and Rachel’s whispered conversation as he rubbed Sam’s head, keeping the dog entertained during their extended stay below ground. Initially bored himself, Marcus was starting to regret his wandering excursion, given the level of trepidation that it had brought to Rachel and David.
From what Marcus could tell, the woman wasn’t a former employee in the laboratory complex, though Rachel and David couldn’t be sure where she had come from. Any and all questions about the woman resulted in the same “I don’t know” response she had given when Marcus asked her who she was. Rachel and David both queried her about where she was from, what she remembered doing, how she survived and even what she recalled about Marcus, but every single direct question was met with the same response.
“I don’t know.”
After nearly an hour of talking to the woman and examining her body, Rachel stood and hurried over to Marcus, leading him to the opposite side of the room. She turned him toward a corner and whispered in his ear, not wanting to be overheard by the woman, who had shown that she had exceptionally good hearing.
“Tell me again how you found her, Marcus.”
“I was just wandering around, looking through the offices when I got distracted by some papers. I got lost in reading them and before I knew it, there was a blue light outside the office door. I went out with Sam and there she was, just walking slowly down the hallway.”
“And she made no aggressive moves at all?”
Marcus shook his head vigorously. “None. I was ready to shoot her, except that when she talked to me, she stopped walking. She didn’t act anything like the man we saw on the way down. If it weren’t for her… condition there wouldn’t have been much at all that was odd about her. Hell, if her voice hadn’t been so normal sounding, I would have shot her point blank.”
Rachel sighed and leaned against the wall, the exhaustion of the last twenty-four hours catching up to her. “Physically, she’s been infected by a swarm of Doe’s nanobots. She’s got all of the signs. Practically speaking, her body is completely mutated, and there are still nanobots infesting her to a degree that she’s giving off a glow. But….”
Rachel paused.
“Well, spit it out!”
Rachel turned slightly to look at the woman before continuing. “The most disturbing thing is her mind. She’s still in total control of her body despite the fact that she’s mutated, but she can’t remember anything. Literally nothing that happens to her sticks in her mind. She can’t remember coming to the lab, meeting you, coming to this room… nothing.
“We’ve been testing her and trying to figure out where she’s from, but anytime we ask her a question about her life, it seems like the memory is just gone. Poof.” Rachel waved her hands emphatically with the last word, then leaned back against the wall. “I have no idea how she even knows how to walk anymore, and I’m afraid to ask her about that in case questioning something in her mind is what triggers the memory loss.”
“Is she a plant? By Doe, I mean, to try and find out what we know.”
Rachel looked over at the woman and shook her hand. “Not that we can tell. David’s had some scanners running, but they haven’t picked up any signals since she got here. I suppose it’s
possible that she’s just saving up data to transmit to Doe, but if he was trying to spy on us it seems to me that he’d get the information as quick as possible and not take any chances by waiting us out.
“As far as I can tell, she’s just another poor soul who was improperly turned. She must have been turned right after the EMP blast, or she was far enough away that the nanobots on her weren’t affected. That still doesn’t explain why she’s here, though, unless….” Rachel threw up her hands in frustration, beating her head against the wall.
Marcus took a different tack, pointing out something he had noticed when he first met the woman. “Forget about that for the moment. Maybe you can figure this out; when I took her hand for the first time, the blue glow in her arm sort of retreated. It moved up her arm to her elbow, like the nanobots were avoiding me. Any idea why?”
Rachel straightened up and raised an eyebrow when she heard this. “Hm. Now that is interesting. David and I have avoided making direct physical contact with her in case the nanobots try to jump across to us due to a lack of DNA whitelisting. I guess I didn’t notice that you were touching her when I found you together or else we could have ruled that out earlier. It’s good that Doe’s using a version of the nanobot’s AI that still has the whitelisting in there, though God help us all if he ever realizes it.”
