Nano Man

by Dean C. Moore

  Pete had already spearheaded the entrance into the compound, being able to see perfectly well in pitch black owing to his computer assist.

  Mike lingered long enough to stuff some blood and tissue from each of the men he killed into the hollow shells lining his belt that were allegedly back up ammunition. It was a bizarre ritual befitting a serial killer. But he assuaged himself with each killing by assuring himself that one day soon he’d be able to bring each of these dead men back, cloned somehow, thanks to the tissue he was saving. That way he could leave this war with his soul at least partially intact. His mind on the other hand…

  “Will you come on, already? You and that sick ritual of yours. I swear it’s time I started sleeping with one eye open around you.”

  “You’ve been eying me up plenty already. Don’t think I’m not letting the girlfriend know.”

  He’d had to work extra hard for that smile under the circumstances; repartee being rather secondary to blowing their cover. So he hoped he’d managed to solicit some stretched lips, but now that he was inside the entrance of the compound it was too dark for him to tell. Perhaps the bigger concern was that the ritual was wearing thin for Mike as well; too many bodies anymore to think he could resurrect them all. He wondered now if he carried on with the ritual just to prove to himself he had not become so inured to killing, there was just nothing left in him that was remotely human.

  “Follow me,” Pete whispered.

  He stepped into the light up ahead coming from an opening to a connecting room. It was the last thing he ever did. He immediately flew back against the far wall of the packed earth corridor, nailed there by an unexploded RPG. The retaliation against his presence was a bit extreme considering the explosion might well have brought the roof down, had it gone off. Pete stared at the shell in his gut, caressing it with his hands, not even trying to remove it, as happy with this latest tech outfitting as with all the other tech on his person.

  Mike poked his automatic rifle into the room with the dim light and sprayed all directions without first looking inside himself. By the time he was done shooting he’d exhausted his clip. He waited a couple seconds to see if there might be any return fire before sticking his head around the corner. The room contained one terrified looking man holding an RPG launcher, his only weapon, explaining perhaps the poor choice of shells. He’d been frozen in place pretty much as he was when he’d fired the RPG thanks to one of Mike’s bullets catching him straight in the center of the forehead. Even the barrel or the rocket launcher was still held level thanks to the bodies crowded around him, huddled for safety. God only knew how many people he was protecting in here, if he was protecting them, and if all the women and children were related to him, or just innocents chosen to make the Americans hesitate long enough to turn the tables on them.

  Mike thought about his ritual that was meant to keep him sane in relation to collecting up this many blood and tissue samples. And then he thought, To hell with it. The redeeming value of the ritual was just one more lie he’d sold himself on, like the one about fighting over here for the welfare of the people doing a damn bit of good. He loosened his bullet-lined waist belt with all the samples he’d collected and let it drop.

  Returning to the hall, Mike said to Pete, “You want me to snap your neck?”

  “Nah, appreciate the thought though. You were the best friend I ever had up until the end. But this isn’t the end yet. I think I’ll hang around a while and meditate on how I’d like my next life to go.”

  “Sounds like a better way to spend your time than anything else we’ve tried.” Mike squeezed his shoulder, tears running down his cheeks. He’d kept his face devoid of shock and horror for Pete’s sake, but the eyes always give you away, or so they say. They were right.

  Mike continued through the compound pushing the crippling sight of the room full of dead innocents killed by his hands out of his mind. He didn’t bother to abscond with any of Pete’s telemetry. Besides, Pete was still alive, if vaguely, so he might appreciate the virtual reality distractions of the computer’s and satellite prompts in his final moments. He might well enjoy the show of Mike seeking justice for him on his behalf. And a show he was going to get.

  Mike’s eyes were adjusting to the dark. The TV noises and the sounds of men laughing were loud up ahead, plenty to have covered for the unexploded shell that had gone off behind him. As to them not hearing the bullets, he was down a level now, so the earthen structure was dampening most every sound. Guess they should have thought of that when they designed the place.

  Following the unwitting homing beacon they left for him, he shoved a fresh clip into his rifle, and stepped into the room, spraying before he even bothered to see what he was shooting at. In the darkness, with nothing but the nineteen inch tube TV to illuminate the room, in black and white, no less, they were largely shadowy figures anyway. At least these had guns from the few sparking discharges he witnessed before all was quiet. All except for the I Love Lucy show on the TV. He had to laugh at the way she was stuffing chocolates into her mouth in an effort to keep up with the assembly line. The spoof on the Charlie Chaplin film wasn’t lost on him. Neither was the number of bodies littering the floor. All of them secondary targets. Not one vic of interest. Without the queen bee, dispensing drones was about as useless a way to spend his time as staring at the stars outside, only with less soul-redeeming value.

  The rumble he felt one floor below told him all he needed to know. Their real target was ensconced well below ground, which Pete’s precious online schematics had not revealed. So much for army intel. The toys were snazzier, the information, no more reliable. And now his best friend was close to dead, all for nothing. From the ruckus downstairs, it could be inferred that this time the sound of bullets flying had reached them. He sure as hell wasn’t sticking around to shoot it out with the forces heading his way, enough of them apparently to make a mud and stone house vibrate despite being made of nothing the least bit flexible.

  He hightailed it back in the direction which he’d come. “Pete, you still with me?” Pete’s eyes blinked open. “I think it’s time you opened your present.”

  Pete commenced hammering down on the RPG shell stuck in his gut with both fists. “Yeah, like that’ll work, you damn ass,” Mike said. “Don’t pretend you ever had any more blood flowing to your brain the whole time you were checking out my ass.”

  Pete laughed, though it came out more like a breathless grunt. “Speaking of asses, go on, get out of here.”

  Mike squeezed his arm for good measure, then ran for the door. Once he was at the entrance he paused and threw one last look back, not because it was the practical thing to do. Pete pulled his pistol and waited until the mob was on him before firing at the RPG shell in his gut.

  Outside the compound, the sound of the shell exploding was less than spectacular. Sandwiched between all those layers of mud and stone, it was pretty well muffled, which was just as well, considering the convoy of troops coming his way. By rights he should have lingered inside to put a shot in the head of his designated target. As it was, he’d have to hope that being buried alive was a more suitable end for him, and hopefully one that was every bit as assured. There might be underground tunnels leading out of the house, but they’d have had to start digging about a hundred years ago. The color of the exposed earth about the compound suggested any digging had been recent, the basement levels likely added in anticipation of a bomb getting dropped on their heads. Only they’d done such a slapdash job of construction, without a proper engineer to advise, that all they’d really dug was their own mass grave. The fallout from the relatively paltry force of the exploded RPG confirmed as much. Inside, the house was a crater where the top levels had collapsed on the bottom levels; the only thing still intact was the outer shell of the house, built years earlier, and to higher standards obviously.

  Mike made a mock gesture of surrender, holding his arms high, figuring it was still too dark for them to tell much about him beyond his outl
ine, the headlights of the trucks not yet on him. A couple seconds before they splashed him with light, he threw the grenades he was holding in each hand, the pins already removed, at the lead vehicle. He was actually running toward the rig when it exploded. He figured the other soldiers in the trucks behind would be too busy ducking the initial blast. That gave him a few precious seconds of fighting time on them that was all he needed to stay alive if he played his cards right.

  He jumped up onto the abandoned Humvee; the soldiers were still running to get clear of the blast from the truck that just seconds ago had been in front of them. After mowing the fleeing fighters down, he drove the jeep out of formation to give him a better angle. Then he pivoted the .50 caliber machine gun, and started firing selectively at the trucks behind. Some bright general or perhaps it was a captain had decided to alternate between troop transports and gasoline and diesel trucks, perhaps planning to protect each potential fuel supply with a threatening display of men and weaponry. Mike ignored the troops, figuring the exploding fuel trucks would pretty much take care of them. He was halfway right. Upon igniting, the troops inside the troop trucks ran out of the back of the vehicles screaming and burning alive.

  “Appreciate the light,” he said, sticking his unlit cigarette into one of the screaming, burning men, seconds after jumping off the Hum-V with the .50 caliber, and taking a puff. My, what a slippery slope he’d been on since abandoning that gun belt not too long ago. All the explosions had stripped him of pretense if nothing else. When the cigarette went out in the heavy wind that was stirring, he relit it with the next flaming man running his way. “You’re too kind,” he said, taking another puff off the relit cigarette.

  The joke starting to feel played out, he bent down and grabbed the bag of marshmallows from the kid cowering against the adobe wall facing the unpaved street. He picked up a stick, used it to skewer a marshmallow, then went around thanking the flaming men for helping him with his roasted marshmallows. Never mind the kid was starving and he’d likely gotten that bag of marshmallows from one of the soldiers on the troop transports whizzing by who’d thrown the bag at him without even slowing.

  When the marshmallow gag wore a bit thin, he took out his knife and started slicing chunks out of the burning, screaming men trying to reach out to him for a helping hand. He thanked them for the barbeque. “A bit underdone, but thank you.” “Just right,” he said, taking a slice of shoulder off the latest one. And he wasn’t pretending about eating the body parts either. He’d read somewhere that Native Americans—or was it the Vikings?—had had this habit of eating a piece of the men they’d vanquished to absorb their warriors’ power. Funny the things that come back to you in the heat of the moment, pun not intended.

  Mike made his way back to the kid, tossed what was left of the marshmallows back at him. “Honestly, the barbeque is better. Could probably feed your family for months on that. If that’s not to your liking, there’s probably some canned food in back of the troop transports that didn’t go up in flames. Hell, army rations can survive most anything. Hope you’ll be able to say the same about yourself in a few years.”

  He’d taken a few steps away from the kid when he heard the automatic gunfire and felt a tickling sensation just below his shoulder that caused him to look down. That’s when he noticed his arm on the ground. He whipped around, looking for the source. It was Marshmallow Kid, who managed to control the gun well enough to put a bullet in his gut before he could end him with his own automatic rifle.

  As he fell to his knees, he thought, All this training to keep him sane under insane pressure. It had kept him alive, all right, but at what cost? As to the efforts to make him superhuman, all the cyborg-like retrofits, they’d played their part not just in his success but in helping him to think of himself as less than human. He loved being superhuman. He just didn’t like the idea of giving up his humanity in exchange. Maybe there was a way he didn’t have to? Or was it just too late for that?

  ***

  THE PRESENT…

  Jane put up her hand to arrest Mike’s diarrhea of the mouth. Suddenly she’d become his priest and he couldn’t wait to confess every last sin before jumping off her examination table. Good for him maybe, but there was only so much she could absorb at once.

  Realizing it was all she could do to stay sane just listening to the story secondhand, she eased up on the judgment a little, figuring living through all that was likely to permanently scar anyone’s soul. No wonder the army was switching to robots. What human could hold up to that kind of psychological punishment time and time again who wasn’t a complete sociopath?

  The only other option was someone who could turn that side of themselves on and off as needed. Was Mike one of those guys, or one of the sociopaths? It was still too early to tell.

  “Was that all fall out from seeing your best friend killed?” she asked. “The cannibalism, I mean.”

  “Maybe. At least that’s what I tell myself. Maybe that’s who I am anymore. Maybe I was human once, and I just need to find my way back. Let’s hope your lessons in humanity stick before you get added to the body count.”

  She nodded at his arm. It had completely regrown. Taking a look at it, flexing it, he said, “Fuck me.”

  She was no less startled. She was supposed to be monitoring her science project, not getting caught up in his tale to the point where she lost any sense of where she was or what she was doing.

  “Is it supposed to work this fast?” he said.

  “No.”

  “But this is a good sign, right?”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  The doorknob was turning. This being a Sunday, there should be no one else in the building. She thought she was letting her fear get the better of her until she got a load of the expression on Mike’s face.

  TEN

  Mike jumped off the examination table and pushed Jane out of the line of fire in one smooth motion. With the new arm, he reached for the gun on his side that just wasn’t there. “Hey, you think you could have grown me an arm with some sense to it?”

  He grabbed the empty syringe out of her hand, and waited for whatever was coming next. Hopefully just a medical assistant entering to take his blood pressure. God knows it could use some checking right now.

  The next thing to come through the door was a foot. It had kicked the metal door in the cinderblock wall wide open; impressive for any body part not belonging to the bionic man. Before the cinderblock dust could clear from the dislodged doorframe, Mike had the door pressed up against the arm with the gun. He waited politely for the guy to stick his head through the door to get a better look at him. Then he stuck the needle in the guy’s neck, plunging down on the empty syringe, and sending a tube full of air into his brain. The rest wouldn’t be pretty, but wouldn’t necessarily happen right away either, which meant tussling with this guy until his body had time realize it was dead.

  Mike threw his entire body weight against the door again and again, essentially hoping to hammer some sense into the intruder so he’d see the smart move was just to die already. He wasn’t having any of the lecture. By the third bashing he threw his body weight against the door and Mikey boy went flying.

  To her credit, Jane wasn’t exactly waiting to be saved from The Incredible Hulk, sporting everything but his customary green skin. He’d already ripped through his uniform just flexing hard enough to lift the door up and use its bottom edge as a guillotine, which was now dangling over Mike’s head. Smart move. He wished he’d thought of it, only he doubted he could have lifted the door. Jane, realizing time was of the essence, repeatedly banged a stainless steel drug dispensing tray against Hulk’s face.

  He was currently showing no appreciation for the facial she was giving him, his grimace ever as tightly drawn as when he’d entered the room.

  “Just to be clear,” she said, “This guy’s on your side, right?”

  “It’s possible he’s having to think of his own future. The people we work for can be very persua
sive,” he said, rolling out of the way of the “guillotine” before it went smashing into the linoleum parquet floor.

  Hulk picked him up and threw him against one wall after another, disregarding he cabinetry and instrumentation against the walls.

  “Why aren’t you doing anything?” Mike said.

  “Sorry,” Jane gasped. “Honestly, the room did need redecorating.”

  Another one who used wiseass comments to cut through tension; maybe they were meant to be together. She filled a couple syringes, presumably with something lethal at that dose, and stuck those in Big Boy. Hulk didn’t seem to notice, not with one, not with two, not with three syringes dangling off him. “That’s it. That’s all I have,” she said. “Anything you want inscribed on your tombstone?”

  “Yeah. Don’t date anything but commando chics,” he said, spitting blood, and wincing. He’d now officially lost count of the cracked ribs.

  “Ordinarily I’d take offense at that. But under the circumstances, I can’t fault your reasoning.” She shouted the last part as she brought the wheeled base of the metal IV stand down on Hulk’s head. Again to no effect.

  Mike’s face was turning red; he could see it in the mirror on the wall, the one thing which hadn’t shattered in Hulk’s sincere attempt to end him. Now it was turning purple. “What does purple face mean, Doc?” he gasped, his feet dangling off the floor. Hulk was evidently finished mashing him against the walls and figured snapping his neck would just be a lot more energy efficient. It seemed the air embolus reaching Hulk’s brain was just creating the room he needed to think straight.