Mind of a Child: Sentient Serpents (OMEGA FORCE and ALPHA UNIT Book 1)

by Dean C. Moore

  “I knew I should have held out for door number two,” Ajax said.

  ***

  “Hey, Incense Guy, you mind? These things are descending on me in plague numbers,” the ALPHA UNIT techie patrolling the perimeter said. He was swatting himself from the bug bites like one of those street performers determined to make a drum out of most anything. While OMEGA FORCE slept, ALPHA UNIT got the pleasure of guarding their sorry asses on the off chance that they could at least yelp loud enough in time to save OMEGA FORCE’s butts from whatever, and in return, they’d reciprocate the favor. With all the yelping he had been doing from the incessant insect bites with zero response, he would say there was a definite chink in the armor of this defensive strategy.

  “Yeah, yeah. Give me a second,” Incense Guy said. “I’m experimenting with the proportions of natural oils in the bark resins, and the stems and leaves on the branches Leon left out for me to see if I can get the smoke from the fire to chase off more bugs.”

  He threw his latest collection of grounds into the fire, like sprinkling so much stinking incense. The smoke from the fire picked up. And the insects biting at Perimeter Man died down.

  “Not bad,” Perimeter Man said. “But it’s not just me you gotta worry about. You gotta produce way more smoke to flush the entire camp of these things.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Why don’t you just use the formula Leon gave you?”

  “Because I forgot it.”

  “What do you mean you forgot it?”

  “That guy cooks like my grandma. A pinch of this, a pinch of that. I could never follow her cooking either.”

  “What are you using to grind the bark?”

  “His battery-powered coffee grinder.”

  Perimeter man nodded. “Nice touch. Beats the hell out of a mortar and pestle.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You realize we got five gallon drums of DEET stashed on the planes, right? I loaded it myself. The army created the stuff way back in 1949 to save them all the work you’re doing.”

  “Shit, Leon’d shoot me himself if he breathed in that stuff. He’s a naturalist. That shit is all carcinogenic chemicals.”

  Perimeter Man shook his head at Incense Guy’s focused labors. “Better you than me, buddy.” He went back to patrolling.

  ***

  “How do the ones on shore know how long they’ve been under there?” asked one of the Chinese scientists standing beside Truman. His name was Fai. It stood for “new beginnings.” How apropos, Truman thought.

  “That’s what the drumming is for,” Truman explained. “They probably have a more accurate sense of time passing than I do.” He checked his watch. “One hour by my reckoning. Time enough to get this show on the road.”

  He and his scientists were standing along one edge of the perimeter of the glowing green lagoon. The trucks were still dumping nanites into it along discharge hoses fat enough for a grown man to crawl through. But that job finished, the vehicles were now departing.

  “This is not the most efficient manner in which to distribute the nanites,” Fai said.

  Truman chuckled. “No shit. But that’s how it is with these people. Ritual is everything. Hell, these are just the opening ceremonies.”

  The drumming stopped dramatically. Not one hand missing or coming in late on the final beat.

  He watched as natives pulled at ropes, raising the three cages out of the lagoon, up until now, entirely submerged at the bottom.

  Inside the cages, from left to right, Mudra, Jacko, Panno. The fact that they were still alive after an hour of breathing nothing but the strange glowing green liquid generated a thunder strike of cheers and hoots from the natives rimming much of the lagoon. They jumped up and down with the same rhythm they’d applied to their drumming.

  The triple threat tore their way out of the metal cages whose bars were each about three fingers thick, with nothing but their bare hands.

  Once again, the natives went wild. Their screaming chasing off the last of the birds that had been happy to settle in for the night. But now were just too spooked. With the amount of spears being lifted to the sky, the puncture marks might cause it to burst, drowning them all in the rain it was holding back.

  Sure enough.

  The lightning whipped and so did the rain. The gnarly flashes of light drawn to the nanites in the water, which would just channel what energy they needed and throw off the rest as harmless runoff.

  But it did add to the show.

  For their next hat trick, the triple threat walked across the water.

  The sight of the miracle just stirred the frenzied natives up another notch.

  When the lightning strikes found no other focal points but the three walking on water, yet again the crowd found another level of intensity. Like a musician doing voice exercises with the different octaves.

  Finally, the triple threat summoned the rest of the natives into the water.

  By now they were so out of their minds with their self-imposed fever that any fears which may have lingered were so far driven down to be trammeled first in the rush to get to the water.

  “You sure infesting this many primitives with nano is a good idea?” Fai asked.

  Relative to Fai, Truman was a primitive himself. So were probably most of the people walking the earth. How do you compete with multiple PhDs earned by the age of nineteen and a 175 IQ exactly? All things told, Truman figured Fai was probably being generous. So in the same spirit, Truman answered him candidly. “No I don’t. But that’s why we call these war games. To see which ideas are worth keeping, and which are just plain madness.”

  “And when they come out of the water again?”

  “Then Jacko takes over,” Truman explained. “Then the real fun starts.”

  SEVENTEEN

  With his legs folded in front of him, Jacko rocked back and forth. His eyes never leaving the dancer in the circle pulsing to the beating drums. He was waiting for the moment the god took hold of him. And there it was. The face drawn into a mask, making the former persona unrecognizable. The muscles popping, the lines between them more severe and the fibers themselves more demarcated along the entire body.

  But now the instrument of war had to be focused. And so the others danced in the circle about him, keeping their torsos straight and facing towards the trance dancer, their fronts from the collar bones to the belly buttons painted with the portraits of Leon and his OMEGA FORCE operatives, one face per torso. The god that had taken possession now and had become the weapon of destruction would leave the circle in search of the first one it could find. And so the circle broke apart to make way for him. Before closing again around the next trance dancer in the center of the circle awaiting his turn to be ridden by a god.

  Once the runner was clear of the fires burning on sticks at the edge of the circle, he was lost to the night.

  Jacko sprinkled the herbs associated with the next god he wished to call upon into one of the bowls before him. Stirred it into the brown liquid. One of his assistants took it to the man to drink to facilitate the dancer’s trance, to create the most inviting environment inside the body for the god. Different concoctions favored different energy vibrations in the body, affected the light patterns given off by the aura. The brainwave patterns in turn altered, distinguishing one trance state from another. Not until the light show given off from the body closely matched the deity in question’s own energy imprint would he deign to come into the vessel being readied for him. Jacko, who could see auras readily from a waking trance state he never left, could easily tweak the concoctions to suit.

  Again the face of the dancer changed. The mask on his face obscuring the identity of the dancer being ridden was different than before. In keeping with the other kind of deity Jacko had summoned. The muscles rippling across his body bunching and thickening in places more than in others to better reflect the deity in possession of the human vessel. Once he’d gotten a lock on each of the faces presented to him by t
he dancers forming the perimeter about him, the perimeter was broken and the latest war god set free.

  The war god that stood forever the closest by Jacko’s side nudged him with his knee. An eight foot giant swathed in green flickering flames. His armoring but part of his body and no mere adornment. Growing out of him and coming to a point above his head, in two spear tips melded at ninety degrees to one another. His staff no mere crutch, but a weapon that shot lightning and cleaved space and time. He was forever eager to get into the ring. His time would come. Just not today.

  Bowls were being taken from the altar of fabric stretched across the ground in front of Jacko, others were taking their place, with the aid of his assistants. Since new herbs were needed in combination if they were to continue to work through the roster of available deities. Many were in attendance tonight. Jacko could see their ghostly forms and energy imprints as readily as those of his dancers. Leon and his people had quite a following. The best war gods from the spirit world were hard to summon. They had to have prey worthy of them. Without knowing it, Leon and his people had made Jacko’s job easy for him.

  ***

  Ajax turned at the screaming native coming at him wielding an axe in an I’m-all-business fashion, the blade high overhead and aimed down in Ajax’s direction. The tribesman was done up in face and body tattoos that had him looking more like a toucan. Strange form of concealment, Ajax thought, until you considered all the exotic fruit and flower and butterfly colors abounding throughout the forest. Maybe he did blend in, after a fashion. At least by day.

  By night, the fluorescing body oils that illuminated his tattoos conveyed a different kind of menace. The kind bioluminescent lifeforms in the deep sea gave off. As an indication that brushing up against them might just be deadly.

  He was not the only thing lit up in the darkness. The leaf litter on the ground was glowing. Or more accurately, the fungus consuming the leaves was bioluminescing. To attract insects to move spores around? Secondary to sequestering a large amount of phosphorus?

  Numerous varieties of fireflies also fought to upstage the phosphorescent native. The entire scene was surreal—and that was before the native came charging into the picture.

  Ajax put a slug in the center of his forehead. His attacker didn’t drop immediately. Took a while for the rest of his body to realize it was no longer receiving signals from the brain. When he finally collapsed, the crunching twigs and snapping leaves beneath him recorded his death in the language of the forest registry.

  “Nice way to give away your position, pal.” Ajax lowered his weapon. “Next time, less screaming.” He holstered his gun. “Love the attitude, though.”

  He pivoted his back on the dead man, took a step, heard another stir coming from behind him. Turned. “No freaking way.” The dead guy was pulling himself up from the ground, chanting some seriously heebie-jeebies skin-crawling shit as he reached for his weapon.

  Ajax lit him up with his assault rifle. The guy danced on air. Literally. Still determined to come after Ajax. He just couldn’t make contact with the ground for all his running and limb flailing. The bullets were keeping him suspended off the ground. Turning him into Swiss Cheese. He had become the hollow man. There was little left for him to hold on to, but he was clutching fast to whatever vendetta was driving him. Finally, Ajax emptied the banana clip and the man fell to the ground. “Note to self, Ajax. No more fighting wars where they do any of that voodoo shit.”

  The guy was peeling himself off the ground. Ajax got on his ear mike. “Leon, you’re not going to believe this. I put a bullet through a guy’s head, and he got right back up and came after me. So I emptied a clip into him from my Uzi—an entire clip, mind you!—What’s he doing now? Go ahead, ask me! That’s right, he’s getting to hell back up, still determined to chop my head off with his ax. Trust me, he may have a physical axe to grind in his hand, but there’s not enough grey matter inside his head any more for him to have a proverbial axe to grind.”

  Pause.

  Crackle.

  It was just static coming back at Ajax over the mike.

  “You really need to stop nibbling at the berries if you don’t know what the hell they are,” Leon said finally at the other end.

  “Hey, screw you. You want to see someone hallucinating, watch yourself after I deck your ass. God damn it!” Ajax screamed the last part unwittingly at Leon as he switched to his cutlass against The Axe Man. He was now too close with the axe to ignore any longer.

  Ajax waited for him to take a swing. Took advantage of him being off balance, and sliced off an arm. Unfortunately not the one wielding the weapon. Ajax’s blade was sharp, his swing strong, but in all fairness, the Uzi earlier had done much of his work for him. He waited for the guy to make the same predictably stupid move. Which he did. That was Ajax’s chance to reprise his sweeping motion with the cutlass. In all fairness the damn thing was more of a small sword than a knife, but he wasn’t splitting hairs. He was slicing off another limb. There went one of the legs. Unfortunately not the dominant leg.

  Ajax flicked the sweat from where it was beading at the tip of his nose with the back of his hand before it threw him off balance. He windshieldwipered his eyes in the same way because the sweat was blurring his vision. Not necessarily a bad thing when facing down a demon. But probably not the best idea for surviving one either. His attacker hopped up and down on one leg and swung the ax with his one arm, spinning around on himself in the process. The son of a bitch remained as undaunted as ever. “I’m really beginning to think you can’t take a hint, pal. My wife is the same way. Yak. Yak. Yak. Doesn’t matter if I’m zoned out on the football game. I’ve turned up the volume every time she opens her mouth. I’m even chewing Grape-Nuts without any milk in it just so the sound explosions will deafen me to all her prattle. I mean, who the hell eats Grape-Nuts without the milk? Tell me I wasn’t desperate. I survive this, the first thing I do when I get back home is google your ass. See where in her family tree you fall exactly.”

  The guy took another swing at him with the axe. “Okay, I get it, you just need to lighten up,” Ajax said. “I feel you. Okay, here’s one for you. “How is a girlfriend like a laxative? They both irritate the shit out of you.” The guy just hopped closer and drove his axe down at Ajax’s head as if he were splitting wood. “You’re straight, right? I’d hate to think I wasn’t being sensitive to my audience.”

  Ajax had kept the prattle going on the odd chance it might be a sufficient shield against his mounting fears, his loss of cool, calm professionalism, his complete undoing. He had had better luck putting everything on number nine playing Roulette. That stupid move had all but forced his initial enlistment in the services just to escape his debt collectors.

  ***

  “God damn it!” Leon shouted as he lost communication with Ajax. “He knows not to put anything in his mouth he isn’t absolutely certain about. What is this all of a sudden, amateur hour?”

  “Your people know what they can and can’t eat in the middle of the Amazon jungle?” Laney said, emerging from the foliage surrounding the area Leon had been sizing up for their next base camp. Curiously lit up by the luminescence of the click beetle larvae and railroad worms coming up out of the ground. Their genetic adaptations meant to draw insects for food. His men could bulk up on the insect protein they drew to them as well.

  Leon glared at her. “Forget how you got out, I put you in that protective womb for a reason. You picked a hell of a time to emerge into the real world.”

  “I’m looking for any born-again experiences, I’ll get religion on my own, Leon. You’ll need my husband to get you out of this, and he’ll need me. One is pretty much useless without the other. Now, I asked you a question.”

  His eyebrows tented. “You were standing right there when DeWitt was educating Natty on the next-to-impossible-to-discern tells of deathly plants from nourishing ones.”

  Laney nodded. “Of course.”

  “We wrote the book on jungle warfare,
lady, and on every other kind of warfare. Teach classes in it. I swear I’m going to kick his ass from here to Sunday when he gets back.” Leon looked up at Natty who was wearing a guilty look on his face, carefully averting his eyes. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Natty said, keeping his eyes focused somewhere else.

  “Me and my people are experts at extracting information as well,” Leon said leadingly.

  “It’s nothing, I said!” Natty didn’t sound any more convincing than the first time. Leon decided to let it go, for now.

  ***

  Cassandra was pulling off her Laney impersonation better than she imagined she would, she thought. It didn’t hurt that the psychic link between them, stronger than ever, for whatever reason, helped her to get a lock on Laney’s current appearance and to duplicate it exactly. It also helped her get a lock on her sister’s scientific abilities, which something told Cassandra, she was going to need soon enough.

  ***

  Cronos was spying their camouflaged faces and bodies everywhere, like in one of those optical illusion brain teaser pictures he used to do as a kid. Find the hidden object. See around the familiar pattern to the unfamiliar facades. Though the term “camouflage” didn’t seem to hold as well at night. Their phosphorescence was meant to be seen and as a warning. The fact that the body tattoo patterns obscured their human contours made it that much easier to associate them with other deadly bioluminescent lifeforms occupying the forest. They still weren’t all that easy to spot. There were enough glowing plants, designed just like Venus fly traps, to lure insects at night. The varying patterns of the plants’ foliage easy to confuse with the curving lines of color on the natives.