Animalis

by John Peter Jones

  He looked at the weapon he had pulled out. It was an advanced laser rifle. Jax checked for a cartridge and found it loaded with three power cells. Laser guns had been a fantasy until the introduction of power cell batteries. The super-saturated electron carbon mixture of one power cell could supply enough electricity to take thirty shots. You could set the penetration level and the distance for what you wanted the beam to stop. The lens tried to mimic what a traditional firearm would do by adapting the focus of the laser in a fraction of a second, sending the deadly tip of the laser away from the nozzle of the rifle.

  Jax came out from behind the refrigerator. He found a line of doors along the front of the building and another series of doors at the top of a staircase. Which door? Where would they take him? Jax moved toward the stairs.

  He heard the sound of a door open. Jax stopped and glanced around. He had made it to the foot of the stairs. The opening door was down the line of rooms to his left. He raised the rifle to his shoulder.

  Through the sight of the weapon, Jax watched a leg step out of the door. The foot looked human, but with the distance, Jax could be wrong. He pulled the sight up and waited for the head to appear. If the head looked at Jax, crouching at the foot of the stairs with a laser rifle pointing at it, would he have to shoot it? The face came into view, but it wasn’t a face.

  A black fabric had been pulled over the head and snugged tight around the neck. Behind the mysterious figure, the tip of a gun pushed him farther past the door. The masked figure cowered, tucking his head down. His hands were behind his back.

  The height, the build, the unique retro fashion … It was Hank. Hank was being pushed forward at the point of a pistol. Jax tightened his finger against the trigger of the laser, watching the weapon bob up and down.

  A hairy hand came out and pushed Hank forward, then came the rest of the badger—the same one that had watched them from the lobby of the warehouse. It sniffed the air, scowled, and tilted its head left and right. Jax could hear something muffled being said to the badger from the room. It said something in return. Then it turned back to Hank and started to raise the pistol up to Hank’s head.

  The middle of the badger’s head was in Jax’s sight. He slowly exhaled, steadying his aim, and fired. Silently, and instantly, a small red-rimmed circle glowed in the middle of its head. It was a perfect shot, just like the thousands of targets Jax had practiced on in training. The badger dropped to the floor.

  No one working at the conveyor belt noticed. The sound of the body falling was as subtle as fabric piling up on the ground.

  Whoever had ordered the badger to kill Hank would need a moment to realize what was happening, and that moment was Jax’s chance to get Hank.

  Jax sprinted down the line of rooms to Hank. With a thud, Jax slammed into Hank, pushing him away from the open door. “Hank, run. This is Jax. Just keep running!” Jax tried to whisper. He held onto him and forced him into a run.

  It was useless to worry about a shot from behind: either the other Animalis in the room would respond quickly and shoot them in the back in the next moment, or they would reach the first refrigeration box safely.

  Jax’s eyes were on the box in front of them. A red dot appeared on it. Someone had fired a laser and burned a hole in the box. Had it gone through Jax painlessly? Just get Hank out of sight, he told himself.

  With a hop, Jax leaped and kicked his legs into Hank’s side. Hank shot to the right, hitting the slick floor and sliding to the wall behind a rack of printers. Jax fell toward the ground and twisted to point his rifle back at the open door Hank had come from. A hyena stood in the doorway of the room, pistol raised. The hideous face passed through Jax’s sight before his body hit the ground, and he pulled the trigger.

  There was no blood and no sound. The hyena kept moving, unfazed by the hole. Jax fired again—another hole. The Animalis kept moving, now with a mindlessness that awakened a fear in Jax’s subconscious mind and manifested as a weight sinking in his stomach. He fired again. Three holes, and the hyena finally dropped to the floor.

  Someone was yelling from the room Hank had been in. Jax couldn’t understand what was being said, but he was sure a dozen Animalis were about to pour from every room. Lying there in the middle of the open floor, Jax could be shot from any angle. He had to get himself up and find a spot to shoot from.

  Time dilated as Jax’s mind jumped through possible locations. If he went to Hank, the fire would be drawn to them both. Hank was helpless on the floor, with his head covered and hands tied. Jax had to focus on surviving and not getting them killed in a desperate attempt to flee. He’d have to get to a place where he could defend himself.

  A section of shelving looked promising, just beyond the maze of refrigerators, to the side of the now confused conveyor belt workers. Jax would be surrounded by clutter, and it would be hard to see him. But the Animalis would be coming out into the open, perfect targets for him to pick off.

  Jax was on his feet and running a second after the three-holed hyena hit the ground.

  Another Animalis was coming out of the room; Jax could hear the squeak of its shoes coming to a stop. Jax dove to his back, using the momentum he had built to slide behind the metal rack while bringing the rifle up to fire again. He slid past one of the workers dressed in white. It watched him, a confused look on its face.

  A hyena dashed out of the second room, swinging its rifle around, looking for a target. Jax fired and missed. Apparently the hyena still didn’t know where the shooting was coming from. It ran, wildly pointing its weapon in every direction.

  Jax came to a stop behind the rack, flipped onto his stomach, and crept forward to the small space below the rack. He aimed, catching the hyena as it spun to face him, and fired. The laser hit at an angle across the side of its face, cutting a slice instead of a clean little hole. Jax’s stomach churned. What had he done? The hyena fell, splashing in its own gore.

  The sight of the blood was shocking. They weren’t just targets, like in training. Jax could see the creature still struggling on the floor, tremors starting to shake its limbs. It was just supposed to fall down and be still, like the other targets. Stupid thing, didn’t it know that? Jax could hear the conveyor workers stepping back, away from the blood, speaking in frightened voices.

  A gun barrel extended through the door frame where the hyena had just come from. Jax tried to ignore the dying Animalis, keeping his crosshairs on the barrel on the gun sticking out of the doorway. It moved. Jax fired. The weapon dropped and the victim fell forward, hitting the ground with a dull thud. A man. Jax had shot a human.

  There was no time to think about it. Another movement from above, and Jax shot. Then came return fire, burning perfect holes in the boxes and shelving around him. One of the workers behind Jax dropped to the floor, hit by one of the lasers searching for Jax. He heard loud gasps and cries from the other workers.

  Jax found where the shooting was coming from and shot. Death. Another movement, shoot. Shoot, death. More death.

  Finally, there was stillness. Nothing moved. Even the flailing Animalis had stopped. The conveyor workers had moved farther back into the warehouse.

  Jax’s muscles started to tremble. He chanced a glance at the clock in his display. Fifteen minutes had gone by. How was that possible? Jax couldn’t even tell how the time had been spread out. Had he been shooting for the last fifteen minutes, and had only just been standing, waiting, for a moment? Or had the firefight been as short as it felt, and he had been standing frozen for fifteen minutes.

  A realization hit him: Hank hadn’t moved for the last fifteen minutes. A cold chill started to spread from Jax’s sternum.

  He ran, dodging behind a refrigerator and coming up behind Hank, who was lying sprawled on the floor. He crouched, about to lift Hank’s shoulder, when he saw two holes in the black head covering. They were close together, along one side of the covering.

  Jax didn’t want to move him, didn’t want to pull the fabric away.

  “H
ank?” Jax whispered.

  “Are they all dead?” a muffled voice came out of the bag.

  It took a moment to realize it was Hank’s voice. Now Jax could see the eye looking up out of one of the holes in the bag. He would have felt relief, but the trauma of the firefight was still consuming his mind.

  “I don’t know. There haven’t been any for a few minutes.” Jax kept watching the doors. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, lifting Hank to his feet.

  Jax loosened the bag covering Hank’s head and pulled it off. Just above Hank’s left ear, Jax could see a line of singed hair.

  A sharp plastic click echoed through the warehouse behind Jax. Before any mental command was given, with his adrenal gland squeezing out every last ounce it could produce, he turned and raised his rifle.

  It was a blurry movement, down the line of conveyor belts. Jax pulled the trigger and the figure dropped to the floor. A loud shriek echoed around the large open room. Another Animalis, dressed in white, moved. It was raising its arms. Jax fired, and fired again till it dropped to the ground.

  There was another Animalis in white, backing away. There were two more farther back in the warehouse. They were all trying to get away. Another shriek cut through the silence and through Jax. These were the workers. Just the workers. Two of them lay dead on the glossy floor.

  One of the workers had fallen face-first onto a conveyor belt and was being slowly dragged back toward its coworkers.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Jax said, turning back to Hank. “I thought … I … I …”

  Hank nodded. “You’re fast, Jax.”

  Jax felt a numbness wash over him. His hands were shaking. But he kept moving, not stopping long enough to let his mind come back. He turned to fire at the crates of weapons.

  From the wall of offices, he saw a blur of movement. The Animalis bounded on all fours and dove into the open cab of the transport. There was a hiss, and light from the street streaked across the floor as the garage started to open. A gun stuck out of the window of the cab.

  “Move!” Jax yelled at Hank.

  Jax dove to the side. The glossy floor made him skid, and he flew into the side of the refrigeration box. He brought his gun up again and fired. The Animalis pulled back into the transport. Red circles appeared on the glass as Jax fired over and over again. Behind the glass, he could finally see the Animalis: it was the lioness.

  The garage door reached the top and the transport began to move. Two more Animalis dashed out of the rooms and ran for the transport. Jax shot one, and it crumpled and slid across the floor. Jax took aim for the second. It ran, his crosshairs trailing its movement. It looked over its shoulder, terrified that death would find it at any moment like it had its friends. Its short mane whipped with the bounce of its run. Tusks extended from the corners of its mouth—a warthog. Like the conveyor workers, the Animalis had no weapon in its hand.

  This one, too?

  Jax fired and missed. Fired again, missed. The warthog Animalis dove into the open door of the transport, and the vehicle pulled out onto the street and was gone.

  Jax held his rifle up, waiting for more Animalis to come from the rooms. The scent of burnt hair filled the warehouse, mixed with the smell of seared meat and defecation. Eight figures lay on the ground, seven Animalis and one human, their limbs twisted under their heavy, lifeless bodies.

  The shaking started to return. Jax didn’t want to look at Hank. The barrel of his gun trembled in his hands.

  “Jax, can you get my hands free?” Hank asked, pushing himself off the ground.

  Jax pulled out his laser tool and cut the handcuffs off.

  “You were incredible.” Hank sounded amazed. “You saved my life. You should have seen yourself when that koala one made that noise. I’ve never seen someone move so fast, Jax. You blew them away. Oh man, I was this close to dying.” He held the bag up and put his finger through the two holes in its side. “But when I was lying there, I could see you just slaughtering them! Wait till Gillian sees this.” He waved his hand out toward the bodies.

  “Shut up,” Jax said.

  “I’m serious. You were amazing!”

  “I mean it, Hank! Don’t say another word.”

  Hank should have been yelling at Jax: “What have you done? You killed them! Nobody was supposed to die, and you killed them! You made them run, in tears, for their lives!” But instead, he had said “slaughtering them” as if it were the highest praise.

  “Alright.” Hank threw the mask at one of the bodies. “I can’t believe you came after me alone.”

  “Let’s destroy the weapons and get out of here,” Jax said. He turned his laser gun to a wide beam and fired into the first crate till it caught fire. The second crate drained the rest of his power cells. He took another gun and finished off the others. The fire blazed and popped.

  The emergency sprinklers would start soon. Jax fired another beam at the crates again and threw the weapon into the fire. As he ran back toward the open door, his foot slipped on something and his leg shot out from under him. Blood splashed under his hands when he caught himself. Next to him was the face of the horrible hyena. Its furry skin wrinkled where its weight pressed against the floor.

  Jax moved to get away. His hand slipped and his side hit the floor. Blood soaked into his shirt. He couldn’t get away from the face. The eyes were open, one angled at the puddle of blood, the other looking right back at Jax.

  It shouldn’t have bothered him. He had seen hundreds of images and videos of worse gore, and it was just an Animalis. But he hadn’t been the cause of any of the bloodshed before. This, these bodies all around him, silent and still—he had done it to them. He had killed them.

  Finally, his hands stayed under him and he crawled to his feet.

  Jax ran. He passed Hank and kept running,

  “Where are you going?” Hank called. “We’ve got to find out where that truck is going. Jax, I need you!”

  Jax didn’t answer. He had thought the world needed him to save it. Killing the Animalis, it was exactly what he thought he wanted to do. But now that he had done it … His stomach had a shooting pain, nausea building. Nobody needed him.

  He kept running, not turning around to see if Hank was behind him. A message from Hank came, but he ignored it.

  The face of the hyena didn’t leave.

  “Eh, mate.” It was Wes, the kangaroo. It hopped alongside him. “Heading out? Climb on. I’ll take you, anywhere you need to go.”

  “Get away from me, Wes—now!” Jax said.

  The kangaroo continued to bounce along with him.

  Finally, Jax stopped. Wes came to an idle hop beside him. “Ready to go? Climb on.”

  “I can’t ride you!” Jax yelled. He held his arms wide to show the blood covering his chest.

  Wes barely glanced at it. “Sure you can. No worries, mate. Climb on. I’ll take you where you need to go. Back to the airport?”

  Jax closed his eyes. Back to the airport …

  He took hold of the horn of the saddle. “Alright.” He climbed onto the kangaroo’s back and hunched forward.

  Take me to the plane. Take me to Grimshaw.

  He shook with the leaps of the Kangaroo. With his eyes closed, the face of the hyena was still there. Why did they have to attack us? Why couldn’t they just leave us alone? He opened his eyes, but the hyena was still there.

  Chapter 8

  Grimshaw

  When they entered the airport, Jax hugged tighter to the saddle, hiding the blackening blood that had soaked into his clothes. The ICT scanners in the security hall would find the laser tool in his pocket, see who it belonged to, and check his ID to see if it matched. It wouldn’t check for Animalis blood on him. It wouldn’t know that he was a killer.

  The door to Grimshaw’s plane opened and he stopped at the top of the stairs. Everything in the plane was white … soft … pure. What was he thinking? Grimshaw was going to be furious. Had he imagined that she would hold him in her arms and tel
l him that he was safe, that the war didn’t exist inside of her fields of golden wheat?

  He turned to walk back down the stairs.

  “Jax?” Grimshaw’s soft voice said. She came to the hatch. “Come in, come in. Hank said you left him—”

  He turned to face her and her eyes went wide as she glanced over him—and likely saw the dried blood on his hands.

  “Oh, Jax, are you alright?”

  He shook his head and turned back around. Metal clicked under his boots as he descended the stairs. Now that he had seen her face again, how could he be around her? She couldn’t know what he had done. She didn’t know him, and wasn’t supposed to. She was just giving them a ride. What had made him think he could come to her like this?

  But then he heard a light patter from her bare feet following him. She caught him on the last step with one hand on his shoulder.

  “Jax, you should come inside. Come on. It’s alright. You don’t need to tell me anything. I’ll get you cleaned up.”

  Her hand felt light on his shoulder; he could have pulled away easily. But the lightness—no, the tenderness was stronger than if she had wrapped her arms around him. Tears started to stream down his cheeks.

  Grimshaw took his hand in hers. Jax let her lead him back into the Atticus and into one of the cabins. They passed Hodge, who was standing in the living room.

  He perked up when he saw Jax with Grimshaw. “Jax, I’m glad to see you! How was your day?” He sniffed, but Grimshaw raised a hand before he could continue.

  “Hodge, close the hatch, please. Make sure Moxie and Little Hank are taken care of for a moment, alright? Please, don’t worry—don’t ask questions. Jax needs us right now.”

  Hodge nodded and went to close the door to the plane.