Alien Infection

by Darrell Bain

  Herb was out the door in two quick bounds, rifle ready-and he began firing almost instantly. I jumped out, ran a few steps down slope like I was supposed to, then stumbled on something and fell. As I was getting up, Mona and Tera shot past me and suddenly I was looking into the barrel of a rifle held by a man in civilian clothes but looking as mean as any angry soldier ever did. At the same time I heard a voice scream, “Alive! Take them alive!"

  I don't think the guy in front of me or any of the others intended to listen at first, not when Herb and Jim were already sweeping the area with automatic rifle fire, but they didn't have to. Herb cut the one pointing his rifle at me down with a blast from his shotgun barrel that almost cut him in half. My next memories are nothing more than a jumble of bodies tangling together and running about in desperate fighting. I later learned that we had the bad luck to come down at the same time and almost right at the spot where General Melofton had planned a horrid attempt to get into the lander. He was going to force a Cincan under threat of death to get close enough to the lander for the entrance to open, then have sharpshooter kill him and see what developed.

  I regained my feet in time to hear that voice yelling again to take us alive. A whole squad of men rushed from the trees and brush, attempting to overcome us.

  I did my best to keep anyone from getting past me so that Tera could get to the lander. I think I killed two of them before my rifle went flying, from a bullet or from someone knocking it away, I don't know. I saw a stream of brass cartridge casings flying from Herb's rifle then he went down as a series of slugs chewed into both his legs. I couldn't see where Jake or Robert were; I think both of them were killed in the first few minutes, but not before they had a chance to cut down the odds against us. The body armor helped immensely. I don't think we would have succeeded without it.

  I was knocked off my feet by a slug hitting me in the side and ripping into my armor. I struggled back upright and that's when I should have kept going because I saw the opening of the lander iris open and Tera and Mona disappear inside. I didn't go because Herb was trying to get back to his feet and I had a vague notion that I might be able to hoist him onto my back in a fireman's carry and still make it to the lander despite his orders to not stop for anyone. While I was hesitating, a weight landed on my back and knocked me to the ground. I had already pulled the Glock forty from the pocket of my armored vest when I went sprawling. Arms went around my neck in a choke hold. I managed to hold onto my gun as I went down. I worked it free from between my chest and the ground while my head was pulled backward and I struggled for breath. I pointed it back over my shoulder and fired two rounds. The weight lessened and I rolled free of the body, getting drenched with blood. Both of my shots had gone into his neck. One of them had cut his carotid artery and it was pumping out blood in a red pulsing stream.

  I ran to where Herb was trying to aim his pistol at some target up the slope. His hand holding the big handgun was shaking like he had the ague.

  "Get out of here you damn fool! I'm done,” he gasped. Blood trickled from the side of his mouth. I could see now that two high caliber bullets had punctured his vest right at the level of his sternum. Both holes were still smoking and reddened at the edges.

  I didn't want to leave him, mainly because I didn't think he was finished; I had seen how the Tersha could stop the bleeding and repair a wound. On top of that, forty years of working in medicine was crying out to me that you don't abandon patients, not while there is still life in them.

  Just as I bent to lift him, another gang of men burst from among the shattered trees to the side of where the chopper sat, all in civilian clothes and all pointing weapons at us. Several of them ran toward the lander where Strongarm was struggling with someone at the entrance. All of those slumped to the ground as they hit the knock-out zone of the lander's defenses, the point where no one without the Tersha could pass. The others came toward us. I heard that same voice cry out, even shriller than before, “Alive, you fools! I want them alive!"

  I dropped Herb's shoulders and rose to face them. With my side vision I saw Strongarm shove Mona back inside the lander as she tried to claw her way past him to get back outside with me. For a ninety year old man, he had amazing strength. I could feel Mona's anguish at seeing me still up the slope and just realizing that I hadn't been following her. Strongarm gave her one more shove and dived in after her through the narrowing aperture, then it closed completely.

  I raised my pistol to meet the charge. It clicked on empty, though I still can't remember firing the rest of the clip. The last thing I saw clearly was Herb, amazingly managing to rise to one knee as he was surrounded. The morning sun glinted off his knife blade. I heard a scream as it came back bloody, then he was swarmed under. I must have been clubbed with a rifle butt. There was a terrific slamming blow to the back of my head. I toppled to the ground and rolled over, just in time to see the lander pass jerkily overhead, then the whole world whirled around and around, getting blacker and blacker, and I fell into that dark space the mind retreats to when it is shocked into unconsciousness.

  * * * *

  The next thing I became aware of was the painful noise of helicopter blades biting into air. The noise assaulted my head in waves, making it ache with a pounding intensity worse than any hangover or migraine headache, worse than the ache of a swollen, infected tooth on a weekend when you can't find a dentist. It went on and on while I slowly became aware that my hands and feet were in some sort of restraints because I couldn't move them. When I tried, another series of pains shot through my body, that of too-tight bonds cutting off circulation. God knows what I would have felt like without the Tersha helping.

  I opened my eyes and squinted against sunlight knifing through the canopy of the helicopter and cutting into my eyes like needles. I blinked and the world came into focus. Across from me was a litter with someone pounding on Herb Friedman's chest. I looked at his face and could have told them to save their energy. I've seen far too many corpses in my life not to recognize one. He was gone, just as he had said he was. I felt a surge of anger wash through me and found myself hoping that the one who had bloodied his knife there at the last was dead, too.

  The anger cleared away some of the pain, enough so that I would have sat up if I were able because I suddenly felt a void inside myself, a blankness where the sense of having Mona near had been ever since she came out of her illness. It was like the two days she was gone to look over her helicopter, but worse, because I knew there was no way to fill it now. The memory of old Strongarm shoving her back into the lander was set in my mind like a protected file that can't be deleted. She was gone from me forever because I don't believe in miracles and I knew of nothing else that would reunite us. I cried then, mostly for the loss of the only woman I have ever truly loved, but I also shed some tears for the brave men who had fell ensuring her escape. Herb and especially Jim, the best friend I ever had other than my brother-and I wasn't likely to see him again, either. Which goes to show how wrong assumptions can be.

  That terrible headache began to fade to where it was bearable as soon as the helicopter landed and the noise of its engine stopped and the whamming sound of its blades grew slower then faded to a blessed quiet. I was carried into a low cinderblock building and taken back into its bowels. The two men carrying the litter set it down and unfastened the restraints then pulled me to my feet. I found myself facing an open jail cell. They gave me a hard shove then I heard the door clang shut behind me.

  I bruised my knee when the shove made me lose my balance and fall. As I got to my feet I saw that someone else was in the cell with me. I didn't recognize my brother Martin until he spoke.

  "Mike, what in hell are you doing here? I thought you were probably dead.” Marty spoke through lips thickened with bruises and split in two places. There was a big purple and yellow blotch on the side of his face. One eye was blackened and almost closed. His hair was matted with dried blood.

  "Marty? Is that you?"

  He t
ried to grin but had a hard time with it. His parted lips showed two broken teeth. “Not my usual handsome self, ugly brother, but yeah, it's me. What have you gotten us mixed up in this time?"

  We talked like that sometimes, using affectionate insults. “Would you believe I've been running around with aliens from outer space?"

  He forced a painful smile. “From the looks of you, I don't think they're any friendlier than whoever the hell has been pounding on me."

  I wondered what he was talking about until I realized that I was dirty and my shirt ripped to hell where the slug had torn into the side of my vest and that I was covered with blood. The guy I had shot in the neck really drenched me. My body armor was gone so I suppose someone had checked me for wounds then threw me in here when they didn't find any. And suddenly, seeing the blood all over me and remembering the violent encounter at the landing site, I began shaking and became deathly ill. Marty saw what was happening and helped me over to the commode in the corner of the cell. I got most of what I threw up in it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I suppose they stuck us in the same cell together so that I could see what they had planned for me if I didn't cooperate. And what they could do to Marty, as if they hadn't already done enough. And of course they would be listening to our conversation, but I didn't give much of a damn. Now that Tera had made good her escape-or had she? I had a vague memory of seeing the lander pass overhead, jerking in flight like it was being pounded by an invisible sledge hammer but that only meant it had gotten off the ground. Maybe she had crashed. Maybe the part hadn't worked even if she sat the lander down again safely. But what then? Melofton couldn't get in but he could sure as hell starve them out if the lander couldn't fly again. I decided to pretend that they had made good their escape and see what Melofton's bully boys would reveal. At least that would keep me from worrying about Mona.

  "Are you okay, Mike? You still look a little peaked."

  I wiped my mouth. “Have you looked in a mirror lately? You were ugly before, but our own mother wouldn't recognize you now."

  "You should see the other guy. Seriously Mike, what in hell is going on? I've been here a week. They said they were from Homeland Security and got me into a car by pretending I knew some terrorist they had picked up. Then they pulled guns on me, handcuffed my ass and brought me here, wherever here is."

  "Ft. Chaffee in Arkansas, the part of it that was closed down years ago. And they aren't Homeland Security. They're a military unit, operating in the dark, I think."

  "So what did you do? Start a fucking war? First they drew enough blood from me to fill a gallon bucket, then started asking about you.” Marty rubbed the bruised side of his face. “Crap, after a while I gave them your last address but they kept beating on me anyway. Then they knocked me out with drugs two days in a row I think. I guess they finally decided I really didn't know any more about where you were than your last address because the beatings stopped."

  "I'm glad,” I said. “You were ugly enough to start with. What happened next?"

  "Would you believe they started in on our family history? What was that all about? Are they going to put us on trial because grandpa died before they caught him?"

  Grandpa made a good brand of moonshine up in Missouri and had outwitted the revenuers all his life. I grinned remembering some of the wild escapades he got into and out of during a long and unsavory life. He always claimed he had fun, though.

  "What are you grinning about, old man? This quit being funny about five seconds after they slapped the handcuffs on me.” Martin is two years younger than me.

  "Just thinking about Grandpa. He was a character, wasn't he?"

  "Yeah, but that's not why we're here, is it?"

  "No, I told you, it's about aliens from outer space."

  Mary sighed. He sat down on one of the two bunks in the cell. “All right, I'll bite. Tell me about it, but if you start out with little green men from Mars, I'm going to whap you a good one."

  I used the other bunk as a seat and began telling my brother the story. I thought about holding back on the fact that I was infected with the Tersha but then decided not to; if they didn't already know for sure that I was infected they would find out soon anyway. I even toyed with the idea of asking Martin if he wanted me to try to inoculate him with a bit of my blood, then discarded the idea; he might not possess the right genes even if we were brothers. I told him everything except that Tera intended to wipe this whole area off the map if nothing else could be done. Sure as hell, if Meloftin found out, that would only cause him to disperse the Cincans and myself to other areas of the country, and probably into deep shelters, so that she couldn't get us all. He was obviously still under the delusion that hostages were the best way to pry the secret of star travel from the Cincans.

  I even told Marty that Strongarm had discovered where the Tersha compatibility genes were located in the human genome. I figured it couldn't hurt, other than some federal prisoners with Cherokee blood in them would probably be sacrificed in the name of research. And I told him on the small chance that Tera wouldn't, or somehow couldn't, take action. If she didn't, then the government would start research on a way to insert the genes into humans so that the Tershas couldn't harm them. Tera had told us that her people were doing the same thing in case it was loose on some other worlds they had explored and they just hadn't discovered the fact yet, and in hope of becoming able to safely explore other human inhabited planets. However, she also told us that while they were way ahead of us in physical technology, they weren't much more than on a par with us in the biological sciences. With the Tersha in them all, there hadn't been a big impetus to study human anatomy and physiology.

  Marty shook his head when I finished talking, then winced when it hurt. “If I didn't know better, I'd think we went out carousing together and wound up in jail after we got drunk and tackled a gang of Hells Angels."

  "I wish to hell that's all that happened,” I said. “No, I don't either, other than getting you mixed up in this mess. Otherwise I wouldn't have met Mona."

  "Ah, you finally fell hard, huh?"

  "Yeah, big time. I wish you could meet her.” A sadness gathered inside of me at the thought of her.

  "I wish I could, too,” a voice said from outside the cell. “We've about used up those other long haired space girls."

  I turned around. A tall thin man wearing army fatigues with a star on each shoulder was standing in front of the bars of our cell door. He was flanked by a pair of nondescript captains. I stared at the general, already knowing who it must be before I even read the name tag. Melofton looked the part. He had a slight mustache and thinning blondish hair but it was his eyes that got my attention. They were blue, but such a pale color that they looked lifeless, like a doll's eyes or those of a dead fish. His face showed absolutely no emotion and contained neither smile nor frown lines. He stared at me with his soulless eyes much like a snake must stare at a bird it has hypnotized. I knew I was looking at both a sociopath and a psychopath, a person who was unable to feel human emotions except under extreme conditions, like when he was observing pain and fear-or causing it. I shivered involuntarily.

  "They didn't seem to enjoy sex very much,” the general went on when I didn't respond to his first overture. “Perhaps it is their Tershas that interfere with it."

  I could have told him different, but didn't. And Tera had never mentioned that her friends were being raped. It was probably such a repulsive, strange act to them that she couldn't bring herself to tell us about it-or perhaps her friends had concealed the knowledge. I was sure it had happened; the general probably derived a bit of emotion simply by remembering and telling me that it had occurred.

  "That goes to show you aren't capable of enjoying sex yourself,” I said.

  He didn't react at all other to continue staring at me with those dead baby doll eyes.

  "How did you survive their Tershas?” Melofton asked me. He pronounced the word as if it were somehow separated from the rest of the
sentence.

  "Weren't your thugs listening when I told Marty about it just now?"

  The general snapped his fingers and one of the captains hurried away, no doubt to chew out an enlisted man for not immediately calling his superior when we began talking. “Tell me,” he said.

  I did, then added a tag line. “And you don't have the genes, you sadistic bastard. If it gets loose, you die.” I don't know why I was taunting him. Maybe I was simply taking out my frustration and anger and sense of loss on the man responsible. I probably shouldn't have done it, though perhaps it wouldn't have made a difference. Insults didn't bother him anyway. He lived in a world completely beyond the comprehension of normal humans.

  Calling him a sadistic bastard affected him not at all. He merely nodded. “But you and your friend Colonel Shell have the genes. As well as many Indians, it seems. I always did think we should have exterminated them completely."

  Was Jim alive? I didn't remember seeing him make it to the lander but that's what the general appeared to be saying. Carefully, not letting him notice how much I wanted it to be true, I said “Colonel Shell and I go back a long ways."

  "Ah, yes. And it will be a pleasure dealing with him again. He caused some discomfort to my career at one time. I'll be sure to remind him of that. In the meantime, you're first.” He turned to the remaining captain. “See that he's brought to the interrogation room in an hour.” He turned on his heel and left. That's one of the tools people like him use, forcing prisoners to anticipate impending torture.

  But apparently Jim had made it. I must have lost some of my memories of the battle because to this day, I don't remember it.