The End of the Beginning

by Mark H Culbertson

  It looked loosely like a German Sheppard. The nose was longer than I remembered it being in proportion to the head and the ears were taller. The canines and incisors were longer and more visible, with the canines lying outside of the mouth. The feet and toes were massively over developed and I noticed that there was webbing between the toes. I almost didn’t notice the claws until Mike pointed out that they retracted like a cat’s. They were huge, claws almost three inches long. The body was elongated with a very powerful set of back legs. The back legs were almost twice as big as proportion would have dictated. It, he was a male, looked healthy and well fed. His chest and lower throat had been mostly ripped out by the double 0 buck shot from the 12 gauge. It’s amazing what one of those will do at less than ten feet away.

  We checked out the other two, both were males, neither one was as large as the one that we pulled from the fire. They all had the same distinguishing characteristics. Mike motioned me over to the first dog and said in a low voice “These aren’t natural. A genetic mutation, either from evolution or radiation would still have variations from specimen to specimen. They would still have mutations that were not viable. These dogs were either bred this way or being selected based on their mutations.” I glanced toward Russ and Charlie before answering, “So you think someone is breeding these things?” Mike just shook her head and said “good question.”

  Chapter 5

  It took a while for us to get back to sleep. Mike took over the watch and Russ came over and sat down on the seat that Mike had been sleeping on. He hadn’t said a word since the attack. I pulled one of the cigarettes out of my pocket and lit it up. It was old, dry and stale, but I could feel the nicotine hit my system immediately. I handed it to Russ and he looked at me for a second before taking a deep drag. I lit another one for Charlie, then looked at Russ and said “You okay kid?” He sat there for a second before replying “I will be, those things just caught me off guard and it’s the first time that I killed anything that was trying to kill me.” I thought as much, but just said “You were quick, if not it may have been the only time, you wouldn’t have gotten any second chances.”

  I got up, lit up another smoke, walked over to Mike and offered it to her. She waved it away and said “that is one vice that I never acquired, but one more night like tonight and I may start. Is Russ okay?” I said, “he’s going to be. Just a little shook right now. With your permission, I’d hit him with a shot of that Jack. It may settle him down a bit.” Mike never looked up, just said “you’re probably right, make it just one and I need for you and Charlie to keep your shit together, I don’t think that we’ll get any other visitors for tonight, but you never know.” I responded with an “aye, skipper” and got an appreciative nod from Mike.

  I headed back over to the fire and pulled out the bottle of Jack, unscrewed the cap and took a quick glance at Russ, he wasn’t looking so I put my thumb over the top of the bottle and said “I think that calls for a drink” and turned the bottle up into my mouth using my thumb as a stopper. I made it quick so that Russ wouldn’t catch it, but I hadn’t taken a drink. I handed the bottle over to Russ and said “go ahead kid, the skipper says it’s okay.” He took a pretty good pull and handed the bottle back to me. I didn’t bother handing the bottle to Charlie. He knew what was up. If Russ didn’t relax he wasn’t going to get any sleep and he’d be pretty well worthless to us for the next day or two. That alone could get one of us killed. It was worth the risk of having his reflexes numbed with alcohol for one night.

  I screwed the cap back on and took a long pull of the cigarette before saying, “You know I went down in Afghanistan during the second invasion. I was flying a Prowler and got hit just north of Kabul by what was probably a SA-7 Grail that some Afghani rebel had gotten a hold of. I was flying too low and too fast to see it coming and that Afghani got lucky. I punched out as soon as I realized what was going on, but I spent four days, thirteen hours and thirty seven minutes down there in the sand before the Navy Seals came in and pulled me out.”

  Russ looked up and said “How’d you make it?” I looked at him and grinned and said “you’d be amazed at how much Afghan lizards taste like chicken!” Charlie busted out laughing like he’d never heard the story before, but I knew that he had, he was there when they brought me in. Russ grinned and didn’t say anything but I could see him visibly relax. Charlie looked at him with a serious look and said “We were lucky tonight, kid. Tonight it was just dogs, next time it may be people armed with those crossbows, M-16’s or AK-47’s. I really don’t like the idea of putting a bullet in a 10 year old that doesn’t know any better, but if I don’t then we may not survive and if we don’t survive then the species may not survive, so I’m going to do what I have to do to make sure we make it out of here in one piece.”

  We sat there for a couple of minutes without saying anything. After a little while, Russ looked up and said “Do you really think that we’re going to survive? I don’t mean the four of us, but the human race in general. We’ve done a pretty good job of fucking up Earth and I don’t think that God’s gonna drop a miracle on us to save us.” I looked at him and said “kid, God helps those who help themselves. I don’t think that we’re here just so that God can hand us things on a silver platter, we’re here to live and learn and if we can’t learn, then we just may die, but I for one, plan on dying trying.”

  Mike looked over our direction and said “you old women going to sleep or yap?” I guess that she figured that was as good a note as any to go to sleep on. Mike was born in Romania, but raised a communist. God wasn’t something that you spoke openly about, but wasn’t something that you denied either. Mike was raised Russian Orthodox during a time when you had to hide your faith if you wanted to make it in the government. It wasn’t so bad by the time that she had gotten to their space program, but it was still something of a stigma to be considered religious.

  I put the bottle of Jack into my backpack and said “you guys check your clips?”, knowing damn well that Charlie had, but unsure about Russ. I made a big show out of checking out the 40 and M-16 and then proceeded to reload the first clip that I had emptied from the 40. Charlie had reloaded while I was busy checking out the dog with Mike. Russ picked up the 16 and checked the chamber and then started reloading his empty clip.

  I lay back with the 40 clutched in my right hand and the M-16 in my left. Although I didn’t think that they would try us again, there was no way I wanted a repeat of earlier. I was pretty confident that Russ was going to be alright, he just needed someone to do his thinking for him right now.

  When I awoke it was light outside and Russ had some of our synthetic coffee and some of the rations were heating up at the edge of the fire. I’m not sure that he slept, but I know that Charlie and I did. Mike was standing close to the door looking outside. I stood up and poured two cups of coffee and walked over to her. She didn’t say anything when I handed her the coffee, just nodded towards the ground outside the door. There was some blood on the ground out there. Not much, but more than a couple of drops. That was a little unsettling considering that all the dogs were inside the building when we started firing, after a few seconds, I said “do you think that maybe we picked up a few casualties from a stray round or two?”

  “It appears entirely possible,” Mike replied, “you guys knocked off a few rounds last night and I don’t think that Russ let off the 16 until it was empty.” That would have been 50 rounds, if he had reloaded after the rabbit fiasco. The original M-16 had a 30 round clip that would have fired three round bursts. We were using an updated version of the M-16A4 that would use 20, 30 or a 50 round clip and was selectable from single shot, 3 round bursts, 5 round bursts, and continuous fire. Mike, Charlie and I had all set ours on the 3 round burst, but having seen the combat that we had, we knew that Russ had set his 16 on continuous fire. Everyone did it the first time or two.

  Russ called over “let’s eat” and Mike and I turned and moved toward the fire. We ate in silence for a little bit.
I know that we were all thinking the same thing, were the attacks going to continue? Would they get worse? In addition Mike, Charlie and I were wondering if Russ was going to hold up. A green recruit has about a 1 in 4 chance of becoming a combat veteran. They either hold up under pressure or they don’t. If they don’t, they either get themselves killed, get someone else killed or they kill themselves. No other options here. Back from before they would always have the option of getting shipped out before anything else happened, but not now. There was no shipping out and we all knew that before we would let Russ get any of us killed we were going to have to take him out. If not, we were jeopardizing the mission and nothing could be allowed to do that.

  Almost like he was reading my mind Russ said “Last night kind of shook me up. I’m not saying that it’s not going to happen again but I’m a little more prepared for it now.” Charlie looked up and said “Don’t worry about it kid, it’s happened to all of us at one time or another, the big thing is how you handle anything that comes next. You can’t be afraid to pull the trigger just because you didn’t let up on it last night. But you’ve got to be ready to make that decision to either pull it or not, without hesitation, based on your perception of the situation. That’s what’ll determine how we come out of this.”

  We sat there for a little while more and finished off the coffee. Russ knew what was at stake as much as the rest of us and regardless of what we called him, he was no kid, he was NASA shuttle crew and you didn’t get to be that by being weak or indecisive, but it was the first time that he had fired a weapon in defense of his life and that has a tendency to put you a little on edge.

  Mike said “there must have been more than the three we killed, Ray and I saw blood on the ground outside the door.” That gave Russ a start, but Charlie nodded and said “I thought I saw more movement outside the door as the third one was coming through, but I wasn’t sure. It was just more of a sense of movement than anything else.”

  Mike stood up and started raking gravel over the fire with her boot and said “anybody who’s got to piss, piss on the fire, let’s make sure it’s out good,” and moved off behind the Cessna to take her leak in private. Mike wasn’t shy, but she also knew that it wasn’t in the best interest of a skipper’s image for the troops to see her squatting and taking a piss in the open.

  We put the fire out good and started gathering up the little bit of stuff that wasn’t already in our packs. There wasn’t much, when you’re in hostile territory you don’t leave anything out of your pack that you may need later. Mike had reappeared and said “We’re coming out of here on the compass, Ray point, Russ starboard; I’ve got port and Charlie you’re tailing.” I wasn’t thrilled about point, but I understood why. Other than Mike I probably had the best combat reflexes of the four of us. She put Russ to the starboard, or the right hand side, because he was right handed and would have a natural tendency to point his weapon to the right, and away from us, as he fired. She took the port so that it wouldn’t look like she was trying to keep an eye on Russ, but she left Charlie on tail for exactly that reason.

  Mike and I lined up on the right side of the door with Russ and Charlie on the left. Russ and I both did a quick survey in front of the building and could see the blood leading off to the northwest. I was holding the M-16 in my left hand and held up my right to Russ with a finger up, then pointed back at me, held up two fingers and pointed back at him, in another words, me first, him on my tail.

  Our big concern wasn’t what was in front of us, but what was behind the corners of the building. I hit the door and did a perfect shoulder roll on what was left of the pavement and came up sitting on my butt facing the corner of the hanger, Russ had come out behind me and to the right with Mike right behind him and to the left. Charlie stood in the shadows of the doorway waiting on movement.

  Nothing happened. That’s the thing with things like that, most of the time nothing happens when you were ready for it. It’s when you weren’t ready for it that it killed you.

  Nothing, nothing moving, no dogs, no armed little kids, nothing, not even Russ’ rabbit. Charlie just stood there and grinned, I looked at him and said “that’s okay dickhead, next time it’ll be you out here on your ass with me laughing my mine off.”

  I picked myself up and walked back to the door to grab my backpack, as I did I saw Charlie’s eyes dart over my right shoulder, his eyes moved, but his weapon didn’t so I acted like nothing was going on and reached down and grabbed the pack and said, in a low voice, “do we have company?” Charlie replied with “just an audience.” I left it at that, if Charlie thought it was important, he’d let us know.

  Charlie and I went back into the hanger and grabbed the two sets of torches that we had rigged up on the dollies the day before and we headed back the way we had come. The wheels on the dollies were hard rubber like on a kid’s wagon and didn’t roll the best in the world, but at least it beat carrying the damn torches. As long we avoided the potholes and rocks in the road we did pretty good.

  The day was unfolding to be pretty uneventful, but I could feel the eyes on my back. I think that the rest of them could feel it too. We stopped at the crossroads where I had caught the kid and swapped places on the torches, Charlie tried to tell Mike that she shouldn’t be pushing a set of 200 pound torches but she told him that if he didn’t shut up she was going to put at least 100 pounds of those torches up his ass. He shut up and took over point. I just grinned to myself. I knew better than to try shit like that. Mike was in better shape than any of us and I knew that she would never bow to anything like chivalrous conduct when we were in the field.

  The going was slow, but it seemed like we were making better time than we did on the way out. That may have been because we were covering the same territory again and it may have been because we were trying to get our ass back to Nemesis as fast as possible and weren’t taking any detours.

  We had just made it back to the main road that we had come in on when Mike stopped and said “I want to go straight on out this road. If my GPS is still correct, then we can connect to the freeway in about half a klick, that should save us some time and less potholes.” I’m not sure if it was the shortened distance or the fact that we wouldn’t have to go past the retirement home where I almost bit it from the crossbow bolt, but I felt myself relax a little.

  We swapped out spots again, with Charlie and I taking over on the torch dollies and Russ taking point with Mike taking the tail. Mike asked Russ what he had the M-16 set on and he replied “five round bursts”, it seemed that the kid may be learning after all. Mike said “I don’t want to shoot at anything that’s not coming directly at us, is that clear?” Russ gave her an “aye, skipper” while Charlie and I grinned at each other. We’d both had this kind of speech before, just not from a 6’ 1”, 200 lb, Russian blonde woman. Mike gave us a glare and said “let’s move it.” She knew what we were thinking.

  We crossed the intersection and started up the incline to the overpass. We hadn’t really thought about how to get down to I-64 once we got to the freeway. We just figured that would work itself out. We knew that it wasn’t going to be easy when we got to the guardrails along the edge of the road. If there were guardrails, then there probably wasn’t an on ramp. I could see Mike kicking herself, but none of the rest of us had thought about it either. I spoke up before anyone else could, “that looks like a service road at the bottom of the incline, just before that tree-line, do you think that we could move along it to the freeway?” Mike said “it’s worth a shot, Charlie, you and Russ stay here and keep an eye on the torches, Steve and I will do a quick recon.”

  We started off down the hill separated by about 7 meters, with me leading and to the left of Mike. The grass was tall but the going was pretty smooth, by the time we had gotten to the bottom we had determined that it wasn’t a service road, but it was a paved water runoff for the freeway. We both thought that the dollies with the torches would make it just fine as long we took our time, but Mike thought that it be
st that we check out the entire path to the freeway before committing ourselves. We continued along the waterway to just before the pavement, at that point it became tough. There was a pile of stones at the edge of the freeway, probably put there from before the missiles went off, to protect the edge of the freeway from erosion. After looking it over, Mike and I figured that we could move the 2 meters or so up the shoulder by carrying one tank at a time if need be. It sure beat going the long way around.

  We had headed back to Russ and Charlie when Mike quietly said “110 degrees and low”. I didn’t have to look, 110 degrees was the embankment at the edge of the freeway. Mike hadn’t turned so the assumption was that there was nothing to worry about other than a set of eyes on us. I kept looking for movement out of the corner of my eye, but couldn’t spot anything. We moved on up the hill without incident, but I could feel the eyes on me. It’s pretty well the combat sense kicking up and telling you that something’s not right.

  As we topped the hill, Charlie said “everything okay?” I said “we had an audience that was pretty quiet.” Charlie just nodded, but Russ had a haunted look in his eyes. Mike said “what about you guys, everything alright up here?” Charlie grinned and said “we’re fine, the kid’s just a little spooked, that’s all.” We sat for a minute and Mike told them about how we were going down the hill, two at a time, with a set of tanks and the dolly, while one person stayed at the top as lookout, during the whole time she was staring at me. I got the hint, Mike was intentionally leaving out the fourth person, that would be me. I just tapped my chest and pointed my thumb back over my shoulder down the opposite side of the ramp. Mike tapped her chest and pointed at her eye, meaning that she would be keeping an eye out from her side, after that she proceeded to tell Charlie and Russ about the rocks at the edge of the pavement and how they were going to have to carry tanks up one at a time and I knew that Mike was going to try to close the gap on whoever was watching from her side. I was going to drop down the opposite side of the ramp and we were going to come up on both sides of whoever was keeping an eye on us. I was sure that if it were the kid again that we would send him back on his way, probably with something to eat.