Nielsen immediately went to Folen’s side. The soldier clasped his sergeant’s arm, looking up at him with a mixture of sorrow and annoyance.
“Nielsen,” he whispered. “Tell my wife…”
The sergeant squeezed his hand. “I will, Folen. I promise.”
“No... listen. Tell my wife I said…” Nielsen leaned forward, until Folen’s lips brushed his ear. “... fuck Obama.”
“Goddammit,” Nielsen said, standing up as Folen briefly cackled at his own joke before dying. “Macy, how much ammo you got left?”
“I’m Winchester,” Macy answered, unceremoniously dumping his MK48 onto the ground. “I’ll take Folen’s LAW. And his M4, so I can shoot myself once this is all over.”
“Great idea.” He turned to Morris, and gestured at the huge corpse blocking the corridor. “We aren’t getting around this. Is there any other way to the bionics bay?”
“Yeah. We gotta backtrack a bit, but we’ll make it there quick if we hustle. Follow me.”
The bionics bay was as big as some brigade-level operation centers Nielsen had seen. Massive screens covered the walls. Multiple rows of desks were set up, as well as what looked like a laboratory in a separate chamber near the eastern end of the bay. There was no sign of violence like there was elsewhere in the camp; everything was still, almost bizarrely serene.
“You better put me in for a bronze star with valor,” Macy said to Morris, taking up a defensive position behind a row of desks. He unlimbered his LAW, extended the rocket tube, and placed it lightly on his shoulder.
“I’ll deny any award he puts you in for,” Nielsen replied, kneeling behind the row across from Macy. “You’ve got a bad attitude. Maybe you’ll get a certificate of achievement. Maybe.”
“All right, ladies,” Morris said from one of the computers, typing away furiously. “I sent the return command a minute ago. Now all we gotta do is wait.”
The words had barely left his mouth when the sturdy steel doors they had entered through collapsed, along with much of the wall. The remaining barghest exploded into the room, barreling straight for Morris and the command console. Nielsen cursed, squeezing the trigger of the recoilless rifle as Macy opened up with his LAW. Nielsen’s round went wide, landing in the bionics lab with a muted crump. Glass flew everywhere, the lethal shards forcing him to duck and cover.
MAARS-bot opened up with all four machine guns mounted to its frame. The 7.62mm rounds pinged loudly as they penetrated the monster’s subcutaneous shell. The .50 cal rounds blasted huge chunks out of the barghest's flank. Despite missing most of its left front limb from Macy’s accurate rocket attack, it barged through the rows of desks and threw itself at Morris.
There was a brief moment of panicked screaming, rising only slightly over the nonstop barrage of bullets. Macy fired the LAW he’d recovered from Folen, managing to completely shred the creature’s left rib cage. Blood and pressurized lubricant sprayed everywhere, live wires hissing as they crossed each other.
It turned to face them with most of Morris hanging from its jaws. The console the SF soldier had been busily typing into was mangled, destroyed beyond repair. The barghest roared, sending a chunk of Morris’ leg flying through the air.
“Fuck you,” Nielsen snarled, squeezing the trigger on his M320. The 40mm grenade thundered against its snout with a shriek of tortured metal. Macy primed and threw two hand grenades in quick succession, both of them erupting beneath the monster’s heaving gut.
The MAARS-bot continued its unrelenting stream of tungsten and lead. Subjected to such withering firepower, the barghest's outer skin was blasted to pieces until it was nothing more than a huffing, wheezing skeleton. It rounded on the robot, flipping it onto its side and viciously pounding it with heavy strikes of its massive paws.
“MAARS-bot, no!” Macy yelled. “Save yourself, robot friend!” The robot chirped weakly in response, before exploding in a shower of sharp metal pieces.
The barghest rounded on Macy. The infantryman hastily back stepped, firing controlled pairs into its mouth as it advanced on him. He tripped over a fallen computer screen and went down. The barghest howled, rearing up on its hind legs to deliver a crushing strike.
Nielsen’s one remaining 83mm round caught it right in the ribs. The projectile detonated with the thunder of a mortar round, blasting the cyborg monster apart from the inside out. The top half of its body blasted toward the ceiling, its torso spewing rancid blood everywhere. Its upper half crashed onto the floor a moment later, its eyes rolling across the ground to stare accusingly at its killer.
The sergeant limped over to Macy and helped him to his feet. Macy looked at the bisected corpse, then glared at Nielsen.
“This is bullshit.”
RESTLESS
Lee Murray
Taine replaced the demi-tasse on its saucer. Barely a mouthful, and the cup so dinky he could hardly grasp the handle. He should have asked for two.
“Everything okay?” asked Jules, who was sitting opposite him.
Taine smiled. It was more than okay. He was here, with her, on the terrace of a French café enjoying a European summer while back home the army tidied up loose ends from that business in the Ureweras.
R&R was what the major had ordered. “Take some leave, lad. I need you and your boys out of sight and out of mind while I sort this,” Arnold had said.
It was easier said than done. Since that last assignment, Taine had been restless. Even the 26km run along the Sarthe, when Jules had been presenting at her conference in Le Mans, hadn’t helped shake the feeling. It’s what you get from years of soldiering. Always on alert, always checking over your shoulder. Like this tingle at the back of his neck…
He stood, the wrought iron chair clattering on the stones behind him.
“Taine?”
Why the tingle...?
There! Crawling across the milky flagstones was a woman, her nails tearing on the cobbles, knees grazed, each breath dragged from her lungs.
“La velue!” she whispered and collapsed, her face dropping to the stones just metres from Taine’s feet.
Like a hot wind before a storm, the whispers ricocheted off the stone walls of the lane.
“Qu’est-ce qu’elle a dit?”
“La velue?”
“C’est pas possible!”
“Ambulance!” Taine shouted.
The café patrons edged away.
What the hell was the French for ambulance?
Taine crouched, reaching for the woman’s pulse, but the café owner, more pastries in his belly than on platters at the counter, yanked him back. “Touchez pas, monsieur. Do not touch!”
Taine shook him off. “This woman needs an ambulance!”
“No one will touch her, monsieur. She is cursed.”
English. That was unusual. In Le Mans, on the tourist beat, most retailers spoke at least some English, but La Ferté-Bernard was small, just a few thousand inhabitants, and this café was mainly for locals.
“Did you not hear her say la velue?” The man spoke in gestures, too. “Can you not see le piquant in her back?”
Piquant? What’s a piquant?
Taine scanned the woman’s back. There, where red locks met the top of her sundress, a slender quill was embedded in her shoulder blade, the skin at the point bloated and red. Taine stooped to pull it out, then paused, his mind racing. Poison? That didn’t make any sense. This was France, the centre of civilisation and culture, not the African jungle. There were easier ways of administering poison than using a dart. Although darts mean the shooter had to be close…
Taine’s head whipped up. He checked the lane for the shooter. The rooftops. Trees. No one.
He turned back to the woman. Jules was bent over her, speaking softly.
“Touchez pas, je vous dis!” the café owner bellowed.
Ignoring his jabbering, Jules tilted her head toward the woman, the cheerful bob of her pony-tail incongruous with the gravity of her expression.
The woman�
�s skin rippled in waves as if someone was reading Braille from the inside. Foam bubbled at her mouth and dribbled onto the sun-bleached stones.
“What is it?” Taine asked.
“I don’t know. It’s… if I didn’t know better, I’d—”
With a rasp, the woman’s skin burst, splitting like an overripe tomato, grey-green pulp spilling onto the ground.
The remaining customers shrieked, all politeness evaporating in the late summer heat as they toppled tables and upturned chairs in their haste to get away. Serviettes fluttered. A can of Coke bumped across the path, dark liquid fizzing out.
What the hell?
Thousands of tiny organisms erupted from the corpse, the green mass swarming across the flagstones. Taine slammed Jules against the stone wall and out of way. The creatures scuttled towards the canal and over the edge. A few disappeared down a drain, dropping between the iron gratings. Within seconds they were gone.
Taine stepped back, releasing Jules.
Not poison then. “What were they? Some kind of crab?”
“It looked like… a crustacean of sorts,” Jules said, her voice shaky. “Oh my god, that poor woman. I think… I think she’d been incubating them. Taine, they ate her from the inside out, like wasp larvae gorging on a caterpillar.” Shivering, she wrapped her arms about herself.
Closing the distance between them, Taine held her, looking over Jules’ head at the woman’s body – now a carcass. Only skin and bone remained.
A movement caught his eye. A single spawn flopped in the puddle of spilled Coke, then stilled. Gently putting Jules away from him, Taine crouched to examine it. Smaller than a fingernail, it was shaped like a single fish scale and covered in hairs.
Footsteps.
Coming at a run.
The shooter? Taine spun, placing his body in front of Jules as a man dashed around the corner, a child in his arms. Spying the dead woman – more clothes than corpse – the man cried out, slowing and crumpling to his knees. “Non, non, non…” he babbled.
The café owner picked this moment to shut up shop, his belly wobbling as he hastened to wind in the awning. It closed with a snap.
“Hey,” Taine said. “You can’t just leave. These people need help!”
“C’est fermé,” the man said, slamming the bi-fold doors. It didn’t need translating.
Leaping forward, Taine grabbed the handle and shook it.
“Taine!” Jules called. She glanced at the child. At what he’d missed.
In the skin between the boy’s toes was a tiny quill. Who fires a dart that small? That low? And at a child?
Streaks of white were spreading over the child’s foot. Wormlike swellings snaking beneath his skin.
The man’s eyes boggled. He drew in a breath and lurched backwards, letting the child roll onto the path. “Non,” he breathed. “Non!” He scuttled backwards a few steps, then turned and bolted.
“Hey! Come back,” Taine shouted after him.
Jules grabbed Taine by the forearm. She’d gathered up the boy. “Taine. Let him go. Whatever these are, we need to stop them from spreading or we’ll lose him too.” She yanked the silk scarf from around her neck, handing it to him. “Use this as a tourniquet. Make it tight.”
Taine seized the gauzy fabric and tied it around the boy’s mid-foot, using a spoon to twist the fabric until the skin around it was white with pressure. The boy screamed. Jules held him tight.
“Sorry, kid,” Taine whispered.
He lifted the child out of Jules’ arms, their eyes meeting, fingers touching as they passed him. Then, hugging the boy to his chest, Taine ran. At the corner, he looked left then right, searching the shopfronts for the ubiquitous green cross that signalled a pharmacy. There were none.
Any other time they’d be everywhere.
Taine thumped the nearest door with his elbow. No answer.
He tried the next. Nothing. Had the curtains twitched?
Jules caught up.
“Jules, we need an ambulance, the fire brigade, an auto-shop, anywhere with a first aid kit.”
She was fumbling with her cell phone. “I’m looking… my French isn’t that good.”
It didn’t matter. Whoever Jules contacted would not make it in time. The boy was in danger of being consumed from the inside. In the few minutes it had taken reach the square, the boy’s toes had swollen to plump purple grapes, the skin stretched so thin it was almost translucent. Taine had to do something now.
There!
M. et Mme Lompech. Charcuterie-Boucherie.
It would have to do. Taine sprinted across the square and into the store, the door rattling behind him as it closed.
“Bonjour, mons—” said the wide-faced woman behind the counter. Taine didn’t wait for her to finish, barrelling past her into the rear of the store, where a man –presumably Lompech – was at work. Taine shouldered him aside, thrust the child on the bloodied butcher’s block, and snatched up a cleaver. The child squealed, and kicked out his feet, desperate to escape. Then, he caught sight of his foot. It was as ugly as an engorged leech, the grey skin mobile. The boy screamed again.
“Mais, qu’est-ce que vous foutez là?” the butcher shouted.
The wife appeared at the door, her eyes sweeping over Taine, the boy, and the cleaver. She started to yell.
Taine didn’t have time to explain, and even if he did, he didn’t know the words.
He raised the cleaver.
But the butcher wasn’t about to go down without a fight. Solid as a ship’s mast, and his face the colour of polished cherry, he lowered his shoulder, and charged. All it took was a neat side-step to send him sprawling. Lompech skittered into a sack of flour.
Taine turned his attention back to the boy. Raised the cleaver again.
“Non!” the wife shrieked.
Lompech was back on his feet, readying himself for another charge.
“Look, there’s no choice,” Taine yelled.
Lompech’s face hardened.
Taine remembered the café woman’s warning. “La velue,” he said.
The butcher froze, his face suddenly pale.
His wife covered her mouth. “Mon Dieu,” she gasped through her fingers. “La velue.”
The butcher stepped forward and Taine prepared himself for the onslaught. Instead, Lompech took the child by the shoulders, burying the boy’s face in his chest and holding him fast. He glanced at the boy’s foot then nodded at Taine.
Taine didn’t wait. He dropped the cleaver, hard, severing the foot below the ankle.
The cleaved appendage flew off the block. It smacked the worn stone slabs. Hairy white maggots slithered out, crawling down the drain the butcher used to sluice the area after a kill. In seconds, all that remained of the foot was the shrivelled flap of skin.
Mercifully, the boy had fainted. Cradling the child’s head, Lompech’s wife ran her fingers over the boy’s hair, crooning quietly, while her husband staunched the bleeding stump with his butcher’s apron.
Taine had to give the man his due. The butcher hadn’t cared for the risk to himself. Hadn’t hesitated to place his mitt over the oozing stump. Taine supposed butchers were less squeamish than most. Or perhaps Lompech thought if anything still infected the boy, his meshed glove would protect him.
Taine switched on the gas and heated the cleaver over the flame.
When it was white-hot, Lompech raised his hands to reveal the boy’s grizzled stump. The wife held her breath. Taine laid the flattened blade against the wound, cauterising it, the scent of seared meat filling the air. Unconscious, the boy flinched. Taine stifled nausea as the stench filled his nostrils. They’d done what they could. Breathing heavily through his mouth, Taine slumped against a bench while the butcher wrapped the wound in muslin.
Out the front, the door rattled. “Taine!”
Jules.
“I’m in here.”
Five grim-faced gendarmes crowded the tiny back room, FAMAS F1 series assault rifles aimed at Taine.
>
“À terre! Mettez-vous à terre! On the ground!” the leader screeched.
Taine raised his arms.
* * *
The office was dark with polished wood-panel décor and two French flags arranged in a patriotic V. There were three men in the room: the butcher, the mayor Godefroi, and a third man dressed in black and blue combat gear, who was leaning casually against a wall, yet to introduce himself.
The mayor was nervous. Almost effeminate, Godefroi’s slight frame reminded Taine of his corporal Coolie – former corporal – although the resemblance stopped there. The man had none of Coolie’s calm, none of his finesse. Taine and Jules had been in his office less than five minutes, and already he’d knocked a stack of papers off the corner of the antique desk. Now he was pacing the room, and pulling at his tie. He still hadn’t said anything.
“Am I under arrest?” Taine asked.
Godefroi stepped over the fallen files and stopped in front of them. “Well, that depends…” the mayor said in heavily-accented English. The room was air conditioned, but sweat beaded on his brow.
“Look, I was just trying to save the kid’s life,” Taine replied, his hand tightening on the scrolled armrest of the tiny divan he shared with Jules.
“By amputating his foot? Benoit will be a cripple for all of his life.”
“He’s alive, isn’t he? Surely, that has to count for something!” Jules protested.
“You weren’t there, sir,” said Taine, keeping his voice even. “We’d just seen a woman die in the street, and then there was something growing in the boy’s foot. Maggots, but not maggots. Ask Lompech. He saw them.”
The mayor’s eyes darted to the other men in the room.
Jules leaned forward. “The woman, before she died, she mentioned something, she said: la velue?”
Lompech spoke sharply to Godefroi in French. The mayor replied and a heated conversation began.
Straightening, the third man raised his hand and the pair ceased their bickering.
SNAFU: Unnatural Selection Page 11
