Dean stood, “Is there anyone still asleep who missed that? No? Then I feel that it is critical that you meet the pucks. I can’t imagine how we will do this without them.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Rescue
Gretel and Hansel were simply thrilled by all the life that the jungle seemed to throw at them. Though they were separated by the length of the line of people that wound their way along a washed out road, they continued to think almost as one, each savoring the various crawling tidbits that they could simply pick up and munch on. Only once were they unpleasantly surprised: a caterpillar releasing a horrible stench upon being bitten. Though it had been Hansel who had taken the bite, both of them spat in unison, dragging their tongues across their teeth to remove the offending flavor. Hansel had taken up the front with Hernandez and Green, while the networked helmets allowed Dean to lead while helping to insure the rear flank with KK at his side.
The Shoremen had come very reluctantly to the idea that the pucks would be necessary. Brandy in particular kept herself as far from them as she could, placing herself exactly in the center of the group. She would have stayed on the destroyer, but Plimpton and his creepy servant had decided to remain on the ship with Gallagher to act as a rearguard and protect their one place of safety, meaning that she would have been stuck with them. Every instinct that she had was telling her to steer clear of those two, so she had chosen what she hoped would be the less horrible option. It was Deacon Jones who felt her occasional touch on his sleeve as she made certain that the pastor was never more than an arm’s length away.
The fully supplied warship had provided food, portable shelter, clean water and the means to make more of it, as well as ammo and even a couple of heavier weapons, which made the group a fairly formidable one. They gathered the gear that they would need in order to keep going, anticipating that once they had secured Eliza, they would somehow escape North. Those back on the ship would have to rendezvous with them along the way. Between the special ops training that half of them had and the general fitness and strength of character (a willingness to tackle a tough assignment) that they all could employ, Dean felt fairly confident that this group held the best chance for Eliza’s ultimate survival as well as their own. As such, he was feeling pretty confident. After all, when fired upon, the pucks who owned this forest had run, albeit, pausing to drown their slaves. The trail they left behind was obvious to anyone with some tracking ability and they found themselves roughly following the canal. No effort was made by their quarry to conceal their movement; and why would they? The pucks down here were the alpha creatures. Dean was considering all of this for the tenth time when Cookie barked out for them to stop. The man stood frozen, pointing at a clearing dappled with sunlight from the canopy overhead. A large black jungle cat stood staring at the group, its jaws firmly grasping some kind of meaty looking thing. The animal exhibited no fear, sniffing the air with mild curiosity. Gretel held out a hand and the cat rose to its full height and began a slow saunter toward her. Dean turned to the puck, “What are you doing?”
“It’s beautiful.”
Dean raised his weapon and aimed it at the cat.
“They look up to it,” continued Gretel.
“It is not afraid, because they feed it,” said Hansel from the front.
It was then that Dean noticed it was a human arm that the cat dragged along the ground as it slowly approached. Others gasped, but it was Alice Pike who lost it, firing a round that took a chunk off the big cat’s shoulder. The animal hunkered down, dropping its prize and hissed its yellowed bloody fangs, ears pinned to its head. “Pike!” barked Dean. “Stand down!”
Pike barely heard the captain. The bloody human stump was too much. She had been dealing with a tremor in both of her hands since witnessing the mass drowning. She hadn’t had it in so long. She was certain that she was over her PTSD and cursed the tremor for throwing off her aim. She was completely unaware of the jungle coming alive with the sound of panicked birds, rodents and monkeys. She saw only the cat’s yellow eyes, and her next round found the space between them. The cat’s body twisted in a corkscrew of tail, torso and legs before coming to a harmless halt on the leafy floor, its formidable size suddenly diminished to a black pelt of little consequence. Sanders yanked her gun away, but by then the damage was done. A call had gone up in a place ruled by telepathic creatures. At the very same moment, Gretel and Hansel said, “There are many. So many.”
“Ah, shit,” said Dean.
Hernandez barked out, “Defensive!” The group as a whole had no time to coordinate their actions. The ridiculousness of their vulnerability became instantly evident to all. Not one among them felt anything but foolish for thinking that they could actually do anything but die in some God-awful fashion or other. Nevertheless, they managed to fall back into the heavier undergrowth and take up defensive positions. Dean dared to lift his visor so that he could make eye contact with Gretel. “Show me,” he said.
“Captain don’t,” said KK.
He looked at the corporal with unshielded eyes, her own hidden behind the visor. “If it seems like I can’t get out of it, just slap me and slam my visor down.” He looked into Gretel’s eyes and was instantly transported to two plains at once. In one, he knew exactly were he was, could see everything around him and in the other... He was spellbound: While fighting in Afghanistan he had been so severely wounded that for a short time he had technically died as his body bled out and his heart had stopped. He knew other soldiers who had had the same experience. They had crossed. Not one among them could ever put words to the experience; they had simply entered a greater consciousness. The visuals for all of them were similar - they all experienced flying or floating or an out-of-body something. The essence of what surrounded them was what they all referred to as some higher truth; total love, a great light that wasn’t. It was beautiful and life changing, life affirming. In the back of his mind, no matter how dire his consequences, he always had hope. This time Dean felt transported (or half of his mind did), but rather than feeling some kind of ecstasy, he felt utter terror. His muscles locked up and he could hear himself gasp. Kelly reached out to grab his visor, but he smacked her hand away. Gretel giggled, and he suddenly realized that Hansel and Gretel, through no fault of their own, were like a homing beacon. It had been a huge mistake to bring them along. The Chosen, through these two puck’s eyes were able to see them all as if they were standing right next to them. His mind raced through scenarios, actions to take, when he realized that he was broadcasting his thoughts to them all. He felt a collective glee over his panic, though he experienced no glee himself. Like his experience with death, he felt as though his existence was on a different plane. Only this time his body was very much a part of him, weighing him down and reminding him of his vulnerability. Then he felt what was like a mental fist wrapping around his brain: COME was the command, and, before he could slap down his visor, he caught an image that had haunted him for a decade: a great horde of Fiends. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of infected were running through the jungle. Hernandez asked first, “What is it, Cap? What should we do.”
The cacophony that had been raised among the forest creatures over the puma’s death suddenly stopped. The trees above them shook, and, as if from nowhere, a mass of monkeys, birds and rodents came racing past, hell bent for anywhere but right there. Then everyone’s focus trained to the East as whoops and hollers and mad screams echoed through the forest. The men and women who knew these sounds felt their limbs go numb and their stomachs fall to the furthest depths of their abdomens. “Run!” yelled Dean. “Back to the ship! Run!”
The ground cover in the distance began shaking and twisting as the sound of snapping branches and the thunder of running feet filled the air. They ran. Even Hansel and Gretel knew the fear. Mindless evil was in the air. A thousand voices filled their heads; horrible thoughts, the Fiends imagining all of the pleasures they would take when they caught the FRESH ONES.
The Shorem
en with their Autorucks quickly outpaced the Northerners; the deacons helping to propel the vicar forward. The fat man was already red faced from the simple exertion of moving in the first place and his oversized clothing was reduced to small patches of dry fabric. As he prayed for the group’s deliverance he felt his heart pounding so hard that he was nearly certain of it bursting through his ribs; the heart attack that he had been expecting for years, finally arriving. He feebly implored his fellow Shoremen, who where not so encumbered as the deacons, to assist some of the others, help the girl at least, but he was wholly ignored as blind panic drove his compatriots forward, none of them noticing that the underbrush in front of them was waving and crashing to the ground as well. The vicar vaguely heard Plimpton calling out from the ship, the speaker in his helmet more of a buzzing nuisance, a distraction between his prayers and his pleadings.
Dean watched the Shoremen run out of sight and grimaced at the spectacle. His wits were fully engaged. He kept his group moving, but barked out quiet directions as he sought a path to the canal. They would swim for it; deep water being the only barrier that Fiends seemed to be incapable of managing. He could see the brown channel through breaks in the trees and urged everyone to double time it, the sound of their pursuers increasing in volume with every step. Without turning their heads, the crew was able to glance behind them as if looking into a rearview mirror. No one wanted to stumble over the tangle of roots or get caught up in vines, but the compulsion to look back was overwhelming. They were almost to the shoreline when Dean saw more. Good fucking God. Dozens and dozens running along a service road, mostly naked and dirty, but strong, healthy and crazed out of their fucking minds. He and his people were going to be cut off, surrounded. He could instantly assess that it was inevitable and as scenarios flashed through his head he concluded that the only path now was death. Then the creatures were right below his feet; the monsters leaping up from prone positions on the forest floor. In milliseconds he made the hunter’s mental leap, filling in the blanks. The mad but still clever infected humans had been driving them all like deer into a funnel, the ones on the ground leaping up to be the net. More whooping Fiends burst through the forest from all sides. He began to turn, to train his gun on his friends, to mow them down with mercy, only to have the weapon yanked from his grasp by a particularly vicious looking fellow who shook his greasy long locks which, to Dean’s astonishment, seemed like a no, no, no. The same happened to the rest. A few rounds where let off, a few Fiends wounded, but in seconds they were disarmed; the monsters surrounding, and coming to a halt. The filthy stinking brutes pressed in, crushing themselves up against the crew, no bites, no ripping at clothes, no tearing at flesh, no attack at all, just wild laughter and drool, copious amounts of drool, and the seeming pleasure of rubbing their naked selves against their captives in an orgy of masturbation. Dean could hear the terrified screams of his crew, but it was all background noise, except for Brandy St. James: As one, the Fiends who surrounded her smelled her breath, her body. Dean was reminded that the girl was not infected. Unlike his inoculated but still infected crew, the girl was free of the disease. The creatures seemed to sense this and they howled in delight as they bared their teeth and lunged for the kill. Just as their teeth touched the screaming girl’s skin, they stopped as if frozen, not a single tooth piercing the flesh. Instead they slowly pulled back and turned to look at Hansel and Gretel who stood in their own small clearing, completely ignored by the slobbering wild men and women. The twins shook their heads no and the Fiends surrounding Brandy stood away from her. It was Gretel who reached out a hand to the girl, who only briefly hesitated before swiftly moving to find herself in Gretel’s safe embrace.
A similar trap caught the Shoremen. No amount of added speed could outrun the wall of Fiends who surrounded them, much less the ones hidden in the grass. Again the creatures quickly disarmed their prey, and again they crowded in tight, past any sense of self-possession. The Vicar, standing with shoulders back, his girth pressed upon by slobbering, laughing monsters, removed his helmet, suggesting the same to his fellows. The deacons followed his lead while the other two, the warriors, stood firm. With all of his authority on display, his eminence, messenger of a loving God, of salvation, of everlasting life, the Vicar Wentworth, his station only enhanced at this exigency, finally, genuinely, face to face with the devil, experienced the most queer feeling he had ever known: a memory from childhood: a pocketknife near an electrical socket, the tip inserted into the receptacle ever so slightly, daring the electrons to flow out, to touch the knife’s blade; bright sparks, the sensation of something other traveling through his body, lasting only a moment before he fell back to the floor, mercifully breaking the connection. Enough. Enough to know what it was to have one’s very core invaded by an external force; the brief loss of self, the notion of one’s essence scrambled, deconstructed. His senses were befuddled as the filmstrip of his foolish youth competed with the invasion of a collective mind entering his sacred soul and ransacking it in careless randomness. Thousands of questions filled his being, the most consistent: IS IT OF THE LAMB? His primal scream for deliverance, his instinctive prayer for salvation for himself and his fellow travelers answering the question well enough. The vicar and his deacons were spared in this moment; forced instead to witness Major Thompson and young Collins’ latent calls to God and unheard wails for mercy ignored as the mob seized them, yanking them apart from their Autorucks and quickly dismembering them while driving diseased filthy black teeth into the fresh quivering flesh - a bloody, bloody feast. ARTHUR SAYS EAT. ARTHUR SAYS EAT pounded through the vicar’s skull.
Plimpton stood gape-jawed at what he was witnessing on the heads-up display. It wasn’t so much that he was bothered by seeing the intensely violent end for Thompson and Collins (their screams and pleas amplified through their helmets), it was the notion that the same thing could happen to him. Hanson surprised him by appearing aghast, his hand over his mouth, eyes wide. Gallagher openly wept and then vomited onto the floor. Plimpton lifted a handkerchief from his pocket to his nose and gingerly stepped around the mess. He pushed a button labeled DEAN on the touch screen in front of him and spoke. “Captain, like yourselves, the vicar and his deacons are captured. Thompson and Collins have been killed. Target a missile for your current position we will. I am not wrong in assuming that you wish to be killed now while we have the capacity to do so?”
For Dean, Plimpton’s voice was like having a mosquito trapped in his helmet. Part of him couldn’t believe that he was being asked to think at a moment like this, another - For the love of God, yes. Yes! Drop a missile on us right now! Yet, as the moment of indecision passed, nothing new was happening around him. Nothing that warranted death by missile. The Fiends just continued their disgusting orgy, rubbing themselves against their prisoners, but nothing more. Everyone was crying out from the assault, but it was as much from protest as it was fear. Then he looked at the twins again. They stood separate from the fray utterly untouched; protecting Brandy, but with wide grins as they took it all in. Dean decided to see what would happen if he moved. He barked “Ops” into his mic to continue the conversation with Plimpton: “Plimpton, don’t do anything yet.” He began to walk toward the twins, slowly pushing his way through the heavy tide of mad humans. They continued to rub against him, but offered no more violation than that. As he forced his way forward he barked, “All” into his mic and spoke with everyone at once. “Don’t fight it. Don’t give them an excuse.” He finally got close to the twins and shoved his way into their clearing as though popping through a thick, slobbering, writhing bubble. The infected people remained at the edge of the twin’s space as though held off by a force field. “Guys. Hello?” Dean had to wave his hand in front of their faces to get the pucks attention. They were simply enthralled with all that surrounded them while Brandy cast her eyes about in horror, tears streaming down her face. Dean continued, “You think you could expand this space? Get them to move back enough so everyone can be clear of
this shit?”
“Of course,” said Hansel.
“Well then fucking do it!”
Both pucks looked at him as though severely affronted, but suddenly the circle began to expand as Fiends fell all over themselves to back away, steadily creating a space big enough for the crew to be free. Most of them gathered at the center of the circle taking up hopelessly useless defensive postures. Alice Pike simply sat and stared in mute shock. Cookie fell into a fetal position and held himself while whimpering. The Fiends stood staring at all of them with frustration, some snapping at each other, even taking small bites of flesh while wrestling to be closest. Others violently fucked. Like flickering strobes, images of rage and glee flashing across their faces. Many of the women were abundantly pregnant.
Despite his brain bogging him down with a hundred questions about how these infected people continued to survive, Dean forced himself to consider the immediate necessity of moving his people. He grabbed Hansel’s arm and gave the puck a jerk, snapping the creature out of what seemed like pure thrill at the current circumstances. The result was the Fiends suddenly lurching forward as Hansel’s distraction left Gretel alone to hold them off. Dean found himself apologizing and backing off a bit. “Can we move? Can you get us closer to the water?”
Hansel glanced at Dean and said, “We can.”
Dean waved an arm toward the canal. Sarcasm built on panic continued to lead his voice. “Yeah? How about now?”
For the first time since meeting the puck, Dean noticed a change in the young creature’s demeanor. In moments, he had suddenly aged; turning from childish and obstinate to sober and weary. “It is hard.” Hansel nodded toward his sister. “We are here, closer, so we are strong, but the Chosen are many and they influence as one, as a group. They are... They are very angry and they keep asking the same question over and over, but mostly to you and the other humans. They keep asking if you are of the lamb. I don’t know what it means, but they are also mystified as to why they can’t enter your heads. Gretel and I are shielding this knowledge from them.” Gretel continued, “You are not dead, because you are infected, these infected humans aren’t really interested in other infected humans. This girl, Wenfrin Blakely, the soldiers, are what keeps them so tightly around us.” Hansel finished by saying, “They are Fresh Ones, as all of their broken minds keep saying.”
Children Of Fiends - Part 4 The Dark Heart: An Of Sudden Origin Novella Page 4
