CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I yell out, “Thor!” and the Creeper’s main arthropod twists and falls, and I fly though the air, hoping to land in the mud and water, but instead landing on hard rock and dirt, and I fade and cry out some more.
I wake up groggily, nearly every part of me hurting. Flames are still dropping down from the burning maple tree. My hands and face are scorched. I try to call for Thor but my mouth is full of something. Everything around me is a confusing mix of rain, shadows, smoke and fire. My jacket is torn. I look over and on the ground is the old photo of my family, taken so many years and lifetimes ago. I fade in and out, and then a burning branch falls on the photo, and it curls up and blackens and it’s gone.
I close my eyes.
Voices wake me, two men approaching, holding lanterns. I try to sit up and I moan, and the nearest man says, “Kid, that’s the damnest thing I’ve ever seen. How are you doing?”
My mouth is full of something and I spit it out. It’s gritty and tastes like dirt. Swamp mud. I try to catch my voice and fail.
The second man says, “I saw it and I still don’t believe it. Can’t believe it! You took that monster out with a goddamn knife!”
I spit again and say, “Over there . . . my dog . . . find my dog . . .”
I rub my right hand across my eyes and things come into view. The Transport Creeper has slumped down, unmoving, curious men and women moving about with lanterns and at least one flashlight. The surrounding trees are still burning, but the rain is keeping things in check. Some more flashes of light. An approaching thunderstorm? Thor. Damn it to hell, Serena, I asked you to keep him safe . . . keep him with you . . . how in hell did you screw up something so simple?
The first man says, “Sorry, soldier, I didn’t see no dog out there . . . look, we better get you to a hospital, report what happened to the authorities. You killed that bastard single-handed!”
“That’s right, pal,” his companion says. “We got a first-aid team getting here as quick as possible, take care of you. Might take a while, though, we took some heavy hits back at the bridge.”
The man is holding up an oil lantern and I see he’s about twice my age, wearing a creased leather jacket, dirty jean pants, and workboots. His hair is black and is tied back in a thick ponytail, and he’s got a trimmed goatee. He’s got a belt and holster around his coat and it looks like he’s carrying a revolver. I motion him to come closer with my good hand and he kneels down, and I snap up and tug his revolver from his holster.
“Hey, hey, hey!” he calls out, standing up, and I almost drop the revolver but manage to get it up in my hand. Seems like a .357 stainless steel, maybe a Ruger, good enough to blow a pretty good-sized hole into him.
I cock the hammer back. “Move without hearing me out and I’ll drop you right here and now. Okay? And if your friend over there moves, I’ll drop you both. Have I got your damn attention?”
The guy slowly nods, as does his friend, and I spit out some more mud. “Here’s the deal. Out there in the swamp is my best friend. He’s a good-sized dog, named Thor. A Belgian Malinois. He’s been hurt. He’s by the legs of that damn Creeper. You or your friend, you go there and find him and come back to me. Got it?”
The guy with the goatee looks up to his friend, who I can’t make out clearly, and he says, “Sam, do us both a favor and see if you can find the man’s dog?”
The second guy’s voice is gravely. “If you say so, Carlos.”
He sloshes off and Carlos says, “You must like that dog a hell of a lot.”
I cough. “You could say that. Where’s Deputy Hanratty?”
Carlos says, “She’s dead. Creeper cut her in pieces with a laser back up on the bridge.”
The second guy called Sam sloshes back, quicker, and says, “Yeah, Carlos, found the mutt. But he’s in pretty bad shape. Looks like the Creeper stomped him some.”
My right hand is shaking and I bring up my other hand to steady the revolver. “Tell you what, Sam. You said a first-aid crew is coming in for me. You get that crew to take my dog out. I see that crew take my dog out and then I’ll give Carlos here back his revolver. Then Carlos can punch me or kick me or do whatever he wants. So long as my dog gets treated. But if my dog doesn’t get treated, if he gets dumped where I can’t see it, or if somebody cuts his throat and says he died on the way to the vet, then I’ll track you down and kill you both.”
Carlos sits back on a rock, manages a smile. “Wouldn’t hurt a guy like you, even for pulling my own gun on me. Like I said earlier, must be a hell of a dog.”
“Some day I’ll tell you all about it,” I say.
More torchlights approach and Sam directs the stretcher crew out to the swamp. There’s some shouting and arguing, but my eyes fill up when I hear a long plaintive howl, as my Thor is put onto a stretcher. I can see shadows moving around and then Sam comes over and says, “You see that? Your doggie just got picked up. He’ll get treated best we can . . . maybe we can get him to one of the bigger vet clinics at the Capitol.”
I let out a breath, cough, ribs and back and damn near everything else hurting, especially the burning in my left shoulder. I use both hands to lower the hammer back down on the .357 Ruger, and hand it butt-end back to Carlos.
“You kept your word, and so do I,” I say.
“Fair enough,” he says, twirling the Ruger once before returning it to his holster. He holds out a thick hand. “Carlos Menendez, at your service.”
I shake his hand, weakly I know, and I try to get up and grimace and fall back. “Sergeant Randy Knox, New Hampshire National Guard,” I say. “Thanks for your help.”
“Long way from home, New Hampshire soldier.”
I try to see into the darkness, to see where Thor has been taken.
“Aren’t we all.”
Sam comes back, offers me a canteen, and I take a couple of deep swallows. “Hell of a thing, what you did.”
“Did what I had to do.”
“True,” he says, taking a swig from the canteen. Carlos says, “Know what they found in that Transport Creeper? Old bones.”
“Bones? What kind of bones?”
“Old bones, mixed up in rotting caskets. Looks like the damn thing was robbing a graveyard. All this fighting, all this burning and dead folks . . . all over bones.” He spits on the ground. “Goddamn Creeper. But at least you got ’em, got ’em dead.”
I shake my head. “A team effort. You shooters at the bridge got the Creeper going in my direction. I was able to finish him off.”
More sloshing in the mud and a stretcher crew comes in, four guys, exhausted, wearing turnout gear from the local volunteer fire department, carrying a metal Stokes litter between them. They work almost as one, getting me into the Stokes litter, strapping me in, putting a couple of wool blankets over me, and then they take me away, Carlos patting me on the shoulder, me looking at the dead Creeper Transport just a score of meters away.
The firefighters are doing their best, but they’re tired and stumble a lot as they bring me through the swamp, making me moan or cry out as the litter bounces around. The first time I get a muttered apology, but by the fifth or sixth time, I think they’re too tired to say anything. They bring me back to the bridge, where a clearing station for the wounded has been set up. A large tarp has been stretched from two dead telephone poles, staked to the ground. I’m brought in and dropped off on a set of planks balanced on sawhorses, and a woman comes over to me, a stethoscope hanging around her neck, dressed in faded scrubs. Her red hair is cut short and she briskly looks at my shoulder, my hands, face and feels along my ribs. I wince a couple of times. Further into the station there are at least six men and one woman being examined and treated. Two sheet-covered figures are on the pavement. A woman is by herself on a canvas stretcher, lying some distance away. Her hair has been scorched away, and she holds up her burnt arms up in the air. One man suddenly starts screaming, “Sweet Jesus, it hurts! Give me something, for the love of God, please, give me some
thing! I don’t have any hands left! Help me, please!”
She says to me, “Sorry, you’ll have to wait.”
Triage, of course. Lightly wounded get looked at later. Those who can be saved by immediate treatment are brought to the head of the line. And those who have no chance, like the woman with no hair, are left to die.
“I understand,” I say.
She says, “You’re the soldier that eventually killed the Creeper, right? The one with the dog?”
“That’s right.”
She shakes her head in disgust. “Yeah, you’re the one who pulled the pistol on Carlos and Sam, made them take care of your dog. Delayed a recovery team who should have brought back a fighter, not a damn mutt. We lose any more tonight, it’s because of you trying to save your damn dog.”
I call out to her as she walks away. “Ma’am, you’re wrong.”
She whirls around. “How?”
“It wasn’t a pistol,” I say. “It was a revolver.”
Some of my clothes are eventually snipped away and my face and hands are dressed with burn cream, and my left shoulder is temporarily dressed and I get a shot of something that makes me warm and foggy. The doctor with the short red hair comes back and writes something on a large cardboard tag, which is looped around my wrist. I don’t say anything to her and she returns the favor, going back to the other injured. The guy who was shouting earlier has quieted down.
Morning is starting to break when I’m taken to an old workhorse, a faded white Cadillac ambulance from the early 1960’s that’s still running. I’m put in the back with another kid about my age, who’s doped up from whatever they’ve given him. Like me, he’s covered with a gray wool blanket, but his blanket slumps down just below his knees.
I doze for most of the ride to the hospital. The siren either doesn’t work or the driver decides it wouldn’t make any difference.
I’m still groggy when we get to the hospital, and I’m processed, poked and prodded, told that I’m at a V.A. institution and I get another shot. When I wake up later I have to piss in the worst way, and I find myself in a ward with five other beds, all of us crowded together. There’s no bell or call button or anything nearby, just a dirty white nightstand that has a cracked ceramic jug on top, next to a pitcher of water and a glass. I swing around my legs and do my business, and put the jug on the floor, and then roll back to look at my fellow patients. Five guys, various ages and shapes, and I see bandages, stumps, and lots of burn tissue. The guy nearest to me has bandages wrapped around his hands and most of his head and he says, “Welcome to the Sixth Ward, kid.”
“Thanks,” I say. “What V.A hospital is this?”
“Stratton V.A. Hospital,” he replies. “Welcome to the Capitol.”
I pull a blanket over me, wincing some. “You’re a welcoming guy.”
His laugh is muffled. “Not much else I can do. What unit?”
“Second Ranger Recon,” I say. “New Hampshire National Guard. Name is Knox, Randy Knox.”
“Good to meet you, Randy,” he says. “Slim Easton, First Combined Strike Force, Tenth Mountain. Looks like you tangled with a Creeper.”
I gaze around the room. “Looks like everybody here’s tangled with a Creeper.”
“Yeah,” Slim says. “Lucky for us, the war’s over, hunh?”
I can’t help but laugh, and so does he, and so do a couple of the other guys.
A woman doctor comes by with two nurses who seem about the age of Serena—who should be somewhere out there in the Capitol with her mysterious brother, hooking up with her father—and I’m told I have scattered second degree burns on my hands, face and the back of my neck, along with a couple of cracked ribs and laser burn on my left shoulder, along with a slight concussion. I have a new burn coating on my exposed skin and a firm dressing on my left shoulder.
The doctor pats me on my uninjured shoulder and says, “Count yourself lucky, Sergeant. Could have been worse.”
“I’ve heard that before,” I say. “Quick question?”
“Sure,” she says, making notation on a clipboard and passing it over to one of the nurses. “But make it quick. I’ve got a whole floor to go through before lunch.”
“I need to check the local vet clinics,” I say. “My dog’s been hurt and—”
The doctor mutters something and leaves the room, trailed by her nurses, and I sit back, and Slim says, “K-9 partner?”
“Yep,” I say.
“Civilians just don’t understand, do they. Even if they do work at a V.A. hospital.”
“Seems that way,” I say.
My stomach is grumbling something awful and I smell cooked food out there in the hallway, along with the clattering of dinner dishes, and an orderly comes in, carrying a tray. He works pretty efficiently and soon enough, we all have lunch trays placed before us. Our meal is clear chicken broth and two slices of dark bread, with some sort of margarine spread and a mug of cold water. I eat all right but my neighbor Slim is having a problem maneuvering his spoon around his bandaged mouth.
I push my tray away and sit on Slim’s bed, taking the spoon from his injured hand.
“Thanks, pal,” he says. “Appreciate it.”
I help feed him and wipe his lips with a rough brown paper napkin as he eats. He smells of sweat and old clothes and burn cream. When he’s done he lies back with a sigh and says, “Man, what I wouldn’t do for some Ben and Jerry’s.”
“Ben and who?”
Through the bandages I sense a smile. “Type of ice cream. Very pricey, very fattening. My dad hated it when mom bought it, but she knew her best boy had a sweet tooth and always made sure there was a couple of pints in the freezer. Made in Vermont by a couple of hippie types.”
“What’s a hippie?”
Slim raises a hand. “Never mind. So, let me ask you then, how did a kid like you from New Hampshire end up in the Capitol?”
“Took the long way around,” I say. “Ended up on a train that got ambushed, then took a Greyhound bus and got roped into responding to a Creeper attack near a refugee camp, Brooklyn North. And you?”
He motioned to the other patients in the ward, most of whom are dozing or who are trying to read tattered paperbacks with no covers. “Part of my platoon, taking on two Creepers up by the old Plattsburg Air Force Base. Mission accomplished, but Christ, we took a burning. You know, maybe I was joking earlier, about the war being over, but what the hell. How much more of the fighting are we gonna have to take?”
I make my way back to my own bed. “Beats me. I’m just a soldier.”
“Bah,” Slim says. “Hell with that, we’re citizens, you and me and everybody else here. President says the war’s over, since the flyboys smoked their orbital battle station. Okay, I get that. We cut off the head of the snake, that sort of thing. But we still got Creepers roaming around and those killer stealth sats are still burning or blasting targets on the ground.”
“Word I heard,” I say, pulling my sheet and blanket up over me, “is that we’re doing what’s called mopping up. Main force got killed last month up in orbit. Now we’re picking off the surviving Creepers on the ground while the Air Force works on killing off the sats. After a while . . . well, that’s the theory.”
“Hell of a theory,” Slim says, gingerly placing his burnt arms over his own blankets. “Want to hear my theory?”
“Sure,” I say.
He moves his head back and forth, like he’s trying to see who might be listening, and he whispers, “The aliens ain’t aliens.”
“Sorry, you lost me there.”
“You heard me. The aliens ain’t aliens. You ever see an alien from inside one of those Creepers?”
“No, but I’ve seen lots of pics.”
He snorts. “Pics can be faked. Easy enough to do. And did you ever see that orbital battle station?”
“Saw it in orbit.”
“Yeah, you saw a chunk of light. That’s all.”
“Sorry, Slim, I don’t know what you’re driving a
t.”
His voice sharpens. “What I’m driving at, kid, is that these aliens don’t have any special powers, do they? Laser beams, flame weapons, really tough metal. Big deal. Some corporations in the world could have put it all together. I mean, real aliens, they’d kill us all off in a day if they were from outer space, right? Or they could beam themselves up and down with no problems. Or they’d come with more than one big-ass spaceship . . . nope, these aliens ain’t aliens. I bet they come from someplace on Earth . . . that way, they can kill anybody they want, and everybody’s out looking to the stars for the enemy, when the real enemy is right here among us.”
“But the proof—”
“And another thing,” he says, going on desperately. “There’s renegades and traitors out there, you know. Folks who are spies for the Creepers, whatever they are. Give ’em info and support in exchange for not being burned. Some cities and even countries have gone over to the Creepers. That’s what I heard about France, some countries in Africa, North Korea . . .”
I’m not sure what to say when another bandaged patient down the way calls out and says, “Sergeant, don’t mind old Slim. His real injury happened a long time ago.”
Slim says, “Yeah, when was that, Porter?”
The man called Porter—who’s missing an arm and a leg—says with a laugh, “That’s when your mom’s doc dropped you on your head when you was born.”
I doze some during the afternoon, dreaming some of Thor, and in a half-awake daze I try to think of a way to track him down, when it seems like supper is approaching. There’s another round of dishes moving around out there and an orderly comes in, but this time, he’s not carrying a meal tray. He’s pushing a wheelchair in front of him, and he’s a beefy-guy wearing light green scrubs and whose thick head is shaved. He calls out, “Knox? Sergeant Knox?”
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