The Orphan Army

by Jonathan Maberry

  The Stinger, not content with its victory, suddenly rushed at them at full speed, hungering for more kills, its tail ready for another death blow.

  Milo shoved Shark over a blueberry bush, juked left, grabbed a fallen branch, and smashed the Stinger across the face. The monster got its pincer up in time to take most of the blow, but it staggered sideways against a tree trunk. Milo seized the moment and swung again and again, hammering at the Stinger’s legs, hoping to cripple it. But on the second swing, the stick cracked and the top two-thirds of it went spinning off.

  “Milo—come on!” Shark pleaded.

  Milo kept hammering at the creature, still hoping to at least smash one leg. That would give them a chance. The Stinger seemed to smile at him, annoyed but amused at the futility of the attack. With a backhand sweep of a pincer arm, it smashed Milo against a tree so hard he struck his head. The stick fell from his hands, and he dropped to his knees, coughing, his chest and back on fire. He looked up with helpless eyes as the Stinger’s tail rose above him.

  Suddenly, Shark was there too, swinging his stave.

  It was a very heroic thing to do.

  Very heroic and very dumb.

  Even from where he lay, Milo could hear the crunch as Shark’s stave cracked against the Stinger’s armored ribs. The stave exploded into flying fragments, leaving Shark holding ten inches of jagged stump. There was a flash as the tail snapped out and down, and then Shark was falling, falling, falling.

  Something in Milo’s mind snapped.

  He drew his small hunting knife and jumped onto the Stinger’s back. With a cry of desperate, hopeless fury he buried the blade between two segments of armor. Green blood erupted from the wound, and the Stinger screeched in pain. With a furious twist, it flung him off. Milo crashed to the ground beside Shark.

  His friend lay in a tangle, his face gray, eyes glazed with pain. On his arm was a red welt that was already swelling and turning dark.

  Shark had been stung.

  Shark was dying.

  The shadow of the Stinger fell across them both.

  Milo struggled to his knees.

  Shark’s mouth worked as he tried to say something. There wasn’t any sound, but the word he kept trying to say was: “Run!”

  “Shark!” cried Milo. “No!”

  The Stinger loomed above them, tail thrashing, pincer arms snapping, dog muzzle wrinkling in triumph, closing in for the kill. All the little hairs along its side twitched and writhed. It bent toward Milo, and pale yellow drool dripped from its jaws to splash on the boy’s face and chest. Milo had no weapons left, no chance left.

  All he had left was his hatred for this thing and all that it represented.

  “I hope I give you stomach cramps, you cockroach,” he said weakly as the creature closed slowly on him. Then Milo hocked up a loogie and spat it right into the creature’s face. The Stinger recoiled in surprise.

  And one millionth of a second later, its head exploded.

  It was an impossible thing to happen.

  It couldn’t happen.

  All he did was spit at it.

  The Stinger’s body remained upright for a moment; then a great shudder swept through it and it toppled sideways to flop onto the ground.

  Dead.

  Headless.

  Ruined.

  And it was all impossible.

  Then Milo saw that someone stood behind the Stinger.

  Only it wasn’t someone.

  It wasn’t a person.

  It only looked like a person.

  Kind of.

  The shape was person-shape. Two arms. Two legs. A torso and a head.

  But it was not a person.

  It was not . . . human.

  The thing that stood there was made entirely of stone. A statue built of chunks of rock pressed together and held by mud and moss. Wrapped in creeper vines and lichen.

  The statue still had its fist raised. A fist of stone with which it had struck the Stinger so hard that the blow exploded the mutant’s head.

  Except all of that was impossible.

  Absolutely impossible.

  And since impossible things happened only in dreams, they happened only when he was sleeping, Milo obliged by rolling his eyes up in his head and passing out.

  A voice said, “Come on, now. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.”

  Milo wanted to say, “I’m not dead. I’m just having a nightmare.”

  He opened his eyes and saw that the speaker was Barnaby, and the Cajun wasn’t talking to him.

  Barnaby was crouched over Shark.

  “Don’t be dead,” pleaded Barnaby. “Don’t you dare be dead here, you.”

  Shark, however, looked dead. His face was slack, his eyes open and staring at nothing.

  If this was another dream, Milo didn’t like it.

  So he passed out again.

  FROM MILO’S DREAM DIARY

  The other night I dreamed I was dead.

  Didn’t really want to put that in my dream diary. Other stuff I wrote down came true. But it’s been bugging me, so I put it down.

  I don’t remember a lot of details. Every day it’s harder to remember a dream. I just remember that there was a lot of fire, and some explosions, and I was running. Shark and Killer were there too. We were running from a Bug ship. Not an ordinary drop-ship, though.

  I kept seeing bits of it above us, through the trees. A round ship, like the Bug drop-ships, but this one was painted red. The one I keep dreaming about. It had rows of pulse cannons sticking out and it kept firing.

  We ran like crazy. Even Shark. We ran and ran. What’s nuts is that even though we never got tired of running, we never got very far. And even though the thing that was chasing us was only walking, it kept getting closer.

  Then there was a fight of some kind. I don’t remember all of it except that it hurt and I lost.

  That’s when I dreamed about dying. Usually I wake up when I die in a dream. Like when I’m dreaming of the hive ship blowing up our camp. Or falling from a hive ship down to the bayou. I always wake up before I hit.

  Except this time I didn’t.

  I was kind of floating there, looking down at my body. I could see me dead on the ground. So freaky. So wrong, wrong, wrong.

  I think that maybe I was inside the thing that killed me. Like somehow I was the thing that killed me.

  How messed up am I?

  When Milo woke up again, the world made a little more sense.

  There were soldiers everywhere. The perimeter patrol. They tore past him, faces grim and angry as they fanned out and raced up the slope. Looking for more of the deadly Stingers. Barnaby stood a few yards away, his arm around Lizabeth’s shoulder. Killer was snugged into the little girl’s arms, and her face was streaked with tears.

  A medic—a twenty-year-old named Ginnifer—­squatted down beside Shark. Her face was tight with concern as she bent to examine the bleeding wound where the barb had struck. Shark’s entire arm had turned a livid red and had swollen so badly it looked like it would burst. His fingers looked like tiny sausages attached to a meat loaf. Shark’s face was slack and pale and beaded with sweat.

  “Is he dead?” croaked Milo, terrified of the answer.

  She glanced at him, surprised that he was awake. “No,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Is he going to die?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  She uncapped a syringe, and without even waiting to swab the skin with alcohol, jabbed it into Shark’s thigh through the stained fabric of his jeans.

  For a terrible moment nothing happened.

  Ginnifer muttered, “Come on . . . Come on . . .”

  Shark lay as still as death.

  Milo felt his heart sink.

  Then abruptly, Shark arched his back and let out a loud groan of pain and protest.

  Ginnifer pushed him back down, pressed her fingers against his throat, waited, counted, then sagged back, nodding.

  “He’s good,” she said
, looking greatly relieved. “He’ll make it.”

  Milo struggled to sit up, but the world seemed to tilt on its axis and wobble. He sat there for a moment with his head in his hands.

  Ginnifer worked on Shark for several minutes. Then she nodded to herself, satisfied, and turned to Milo.

  “Let’s have a look at you.”

  He tried to argue about it, lost, and endured her touches and pokes. There was fresh pain everywhere she touched. She sprayed the back of his head with something cold, used antibacterial swabs to clean the Stinger blood from his face, and checked his pulse, pupil dilation, and blood pressure.

  “You’re pretty banged up, but you’ll live, too.”

  “I’m okay,” said Milo, trying to fend her off. “I’m okay.”

  For a moment Shark opened his eyes and looked around as if trying to understand the things he saw. His eyes were bloodshot and his face all puffed out.

  “M-Milo—?”

  “Yeah, man. How are you?”

  Shark licked his lips. “This really, really, really, really, really sucks.”

  Milo took his hand and squeezed it. Shark didn’t squeeze back. Instead his eyes drifted closed and his hand flopped back onto the ground.

  “No!” cried Milo as he grabbed for Shark to try to shake him, but the medic pushed him gently back.

  “It’s okay,” said Ginnifer quickly. “If Shark were skinny like you, he’d be a goner. He has greater blood volume. Probably more than I do. After this, no one’s going to bust on him for going for second helpings. He’s one tough kid.”

  Shark groaned like an old man.

  “Relatively speaking,” amended the medic. “Mind you, he’ll be sore, dizzy, and sick to his stomach for a few days. The Stinger’s venom causes an allergic reaction, but the epinephrine I gave him is already working. See? The swelling is already down a little. Give it time and he’ll be right as rain.” Ginnifer studied Shark for a moment and then glanced at Milo. “Tell me again how all this happened.”

  When Barnaby and Lizabeth realized that Milo was awake, they hurried over and squatted down. Killer jumped from her arms and tried to lick Shark awake. When that didn’t work, he snuggled against Shark’s side and whimpered quietly.

  “What happened?” asked Barnaby. “How you do dat to da Stinger?”

  “Yes,” agreed Ginnifer. “How on earth did you do that?”

  “Do . . . what?”

  “How’d you kill dat scisseaux?” demanded Barnaby, using the Cajun word for an insect with pincers. “You have a grenade, you? What you use? I didn’t hear nothin’ go off, but . . .”

  Milo looked at the dead mutant.

  All of the details came back to him in a rush. He almost told them what he thought happened. What he’d seen.

  Almost.

  But didn’t.

  First a wolf.

  Then a . . .

  A what?

  A man made of stone?

  How was that ever going to make sense?

  So he told them a version of the truth.

  “I don’t know,” he said when they asked him to explain it all. “I really don’t.”

  Barnaby gave him a narrow, suspicious look, and Milo wondered if the pod-leader had seen some of it. Barnaby said nothing, though. Not about that.

  “I have to check on da rest of the pod, me,” he said vaguely, and wandered off.

  Ginnifer called for stretcher bearers and oversaw the transport of Shark back to camp. That left Lizabeth and Milo alone for a moment.

  She helped him get to his feet, and though he was dizzy, the world seemed to be less wobbly.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “I guess.”

  They stood there, looking at the decapitated Stinger. Milo wanted to scream. Not only had he seen his first Stinger, but he’d fought one and seen it killed.

  Already the details of the last few minutes seemed to be fading into a confused version of a dream rather than actual memory.

  “I saw it,” said Lizabeth, jarring him from his thoughts. He turned to her.

  “What?”

  “I saw it,” she repeated.

  “Saw . . . what?”

  Her pale eyes were huge and haunted. “The stone man.”

  Milo could feel that familiar cold hand reach into his chest and take hold of his heart. “W-what?”

  “I saw him,” she said, nodding. “He came out of the mist and hit the Stinger and killed him. I saw it.”

  “Oh.”

  “He left footprints,” she said, and pointed to a bunch of round indentations. They were identical to the marks they’d found at the debris field yesterday. “See? It must have been the rock man who stomped all over the crash site. Maybe he was mad because someone broke open that pyramid. I think the Bugs did that, and the rock man wanted to get them back for it.”

  When Milo didn’t respond, she nodded as if he had.

  “I saw the wolf, too,” she said.

  Milo ran his trembling fingers through his hair.

  “They went off together,” said the little girl. She pointed to the south, down toward the bayou. “That way. The wolf and the stone man. They went down there together.”

  There were no paw prints, but there was a line of the same round indentations.

  After a few seconds, Lizabeth said, “Do you believe in monsters, Milo?”

  He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. He cleared his throat. “You’re not asking about the Bugs or Stingers, are you?”

  “No. I mean real monsters. Like in stories.”

  “I—” Milo began, but he honestly did not know where to go with the conversation.

  Lizabeth smiled and nodded again. Then she took his hand and led him back toward camp.

  Tuesday morning turned into Tuesday afternoon and began creeping its way toward Tuesday evening. So far Milo hadn’t liked any of it.

  His body hurt everywhere. He was sure his molecules were bruised. And as for his brain, Milo was convinced that either he was totally nuts or the world was.

  Maybe both.

  He sat with Shark on the tailgate of an old army truck. Shark looked like Milo felt. They both wore clean clothes, but they were still grubby and shell-shocked. The aftereffects of adrenaline made Milo jumpy, and the epinephrine kept Shark on the edge of snoozing.

  The only comfort was that someone had sent a runner to notify his mom’s patrol. With any luck, she’d be back by morning. Milo would have rather had his fingernails pulled out than admit it aloud, but he really needed a hug. Not just any hug. A Mom hug. Shark would probably get one too. From Mom and his aunt Jenny.

  They each had plates of food on their laps, though neither of them had much of an appetite. Every time Milo tried to take a bite, the tines of the fork rattled against his teeth. His hands were shaking that bad.

  Despite his reluctance to talk about it, Barnaby convinced Milo to give a full account of what happened. He did, but at first didn’t mention the stone figure, but then Lizzie jumped in and ranted—quite loudly—about a boy made of rock. Milo flinched, expecting everyone to laugh at him, but they didn’t. In fact, one of the officers, Lieutenant Jeter, floated a suggestion that everyone seemed to accept.

  “Must have been some new tech,” he said. “Some kind of exoskeleton with hydraulics to give the wearer extra strength.”

  “Do we even have that?” asked Shark.

  “They were working on combat exoskels before the war. Maybe somebody built one.”

  “What about the rocks and all?” asked Milo.

  Jeter shrugged. “Camouflage. I mean, what else could it be, right?”

  That had been the end of the conversation. Jeter sent scouts out to find whoever had the new tech. Milo, for all that this was a reasonable explanation, was pretty sure they weren’t going to find any rogue soldiers in high-tech battle armor.

  Lizabeth, who’d been there during that conversation, laughed at the idea and went back to her tent.

  Now it was just Milo, Shark,
and Killer on the tailgate. Above the camo netting, the sun was tumbling toward the western tree line, and twilight was beginning to paint interesting colors on the sky. Pale purples and vermillion with streaks of yellow. It was pretty, and Milo usually liked the lurid sunsets even though he knew that intensity of colors came from dust and ash hurled into the atmosphere by the Dissosterin mining rigs. The ones that tore great gaping holes in the earth to get at the rich veins of minerals.

  The people of the sun . . . your people, the Witch of the World had said in his dream, hammered in the first cracks. Now the Swarm has come from behind the stars to kill what is already dying.

  Remembering those words made him shudder. They felt a lot less like something from a dream and too much like a statement of fact.

  “Well,” said Shark, whose face was a ghastly shade of gray-green, “that really sucked.”

  He was so weak, he gave it only one “really.”

  “Yeah,” said Milo softly. “Yeah, it did.”

  Shark looked like a sick old man instead of an eleven-­year-old boy. He sipped the snot-tasting tea from his canteen, wincing as it went down.

  “Really tastes that bad?” asked Milo.

  “It’s not that,” said Shark is a husky voice. “My throat’s still closed. Hard to swallow, you know. And I feel like a balloon, which is just what I need—to look fatter.”

  “You don’t look fatter,” said Milo. “You look kind of . . . inflated.”

  “Gee, thanks,” said Shark sourly.

  “Could be worse.”

  “How?”

  Milo tried to make a joke, frowned at the middle distance, then shook his head. “I got nothing.”

  They sat there, both of them totally wrung out from what happened.

  “A Stinger, dude,” said Shark after a while.

  “A Stinger,” agreed Milo. “Geez.”

  They both shivered.

  After a while, Milo said, “Look . . . about the other stuff. The wolf and all . . .”

  “Yeah.”

  Shark shook his head. “Am I crazy, or did she try to save us from the Stinger?”

  “Seemed like it to me. Kept going after the Stinger.”