Wrath of the Carnelians (Europa)

by Jason Gehlert

  “Yes.”

  “He’s not going down without a fight this time, I guarantee that.”

  “I have a plan,” Anstice offered. “It might sound a bit far-fetched,” he paused, “but, it’s our only chance for survival.”

  “Please tell me, it’s not the hook story again.” Shaw’s narrowed and stared at Anstice’s dark cell.

  “No, it’s even better. Do you have friends on the outside?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Well, my friend, if we are going to win this war, then it’s going to be a total team effort.”

  “I’m game,” Susan said.

  “Yeah, count us in too,” Joe and Trisha echoed.

  “Well, if they are willing to sacrifice their lives, then they will need a leader right?” Shaw looked around the room.

  “I’m in,” her voice was groggy, but coherent.

  “Gillian?” Shaw was relieved to see his friend alive.

  “I want Adrian fucking dead.” Her once adorable freckled face, had since transformed to a revengeful snickering. Gillian caught sight of the other prisoners.

  “Language,” Shaw said. “Gillian, watch the spicy words.”

  “What are you yapping about?” She barked back.

  “We have Bud’s family here, and they have a small boy in tow.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she apologized. “I meant no harm by it.”

  “Thank you,” Shaw responded.

  “What I meant to say was,” she began, carefully choosing her words, “is that I want to give him a great big hug that takes his breath away.” She attempted to stand up. “And you know who else I want to hug?”

  “Who is that sweetie?” Shaw asked, fully knowing the answer.

  “Black.” Gillian inspected her bloody shoulder. “He shot me.”

  Ignoring her rambling, Shaw looked over at Anstice. “I’m going to need a second-Lieutenant,” Shaw looked over at Anstice. “Interested?”

  “Do I get to hug people too?” Anstice wanted to know.

  “You can hug anyone as many people as you want.” Gillian looked him over. “And you would be?”

  “Ah, it’s a long and complicated story,” Shaw interrupted, “he’s a new friend. An ally of sorts if you will. In any case, I’ll catch you up later once we get out of here.”

  In the other cell, Tyler looked over at his parents and grandmother. “I want to hug someone,” his soft words had brought a light-hearted calmness to the frazzled group. His pudgy face expressed an eerie sense of contentedness, quietly sitting wrapped up in his favorite navy blue and white New York Yankees blanket and wearing his black and silver Batman pajamas.

  In the Name of Science

  “We’re running out of time,” Black issued the stern proclamation as we furiously paced back and forth inside the darkened laboratory. “Perrine, sweetheart,” Black again attempted to force logic and reasoning into his girlfriend’s withering mind set.

  “You know better. Don’t sweetheart me,” Perrine snapped back, while she continued to monitor the large glass tubes that had surrounded the room’s perimeter. A series of bubbles began their ascent to the surface in each of the many tubes, swirling around the human hybrid specimens inside the watery solution. Her feet angrily snapped several of the bones inside her toes, displaying her patience slowly vanishing underneath all the stress of getting the Carnelian’s army ready for attack.

  “The Feast is only three days away,” Black said, “You will have them ready for his return.”

  “He’s close Ken, I can sense his presence,” Perrine tapped the glass tube and cringed her head to the side. “These will be the fastest, smartest, and truly immortal soldiers ever born from the loins of genetics,” she lovingly clucked her tongue summoning a small animal from the dark corner of the room. The ferret-like animal, which had since been bred with a infant Carnelian, scooted up Perrine’s arm and rested atop her left shoulder, perched and ready to attack. Turning to Black, Perrine’s lips pursed together, removing the distance between the two lovers with quickened steps. “I love you Ken.” She stepped in close until their bodies were inches apart.

  “I love you too,” he answered, feeling the hotness of her breath across his scarred face.

  “When we are victorious, I want you by my side holding my hand.” She leaned in and pressed her lips against his.

  “I want to watch every one of them die,” Black said with a hungry tone in his voice.

  “Mmm,” she purred. “You know how much I love it when you talk dirty,” she continued to seduce her man, pulling with a hungry fierceness on his lower lip.

  “I want to hear them scream in pain once let the Carnelians rip them apart from the inside,” Black said, reaching for Perrine’s curvy hips. He pulled her closer, and seduced her with an animal instinct.

  “Take me now,” she ran her black fingernails all over his scarred face. She coyly played with his eye patch, sliding it away from his damaged eye. “I love it when you look deep in my eyes,” Perrine cooed, forcefully pushing Black across the room and inside the scientist’s quarters.

  Black, not one for romance, felt a strong connection that ushered a soulful feeling for Perrine. Entranced, he reached out for her jumpsuit. Perrine still had the Apollo’s standard issue, black and gray suit. Black’s hand unzipped the front, exposing Perrine’s black bra and panties. Her pale white skin expanded and contracted as the infant Carnelian’s moved freely underneath. Black placed his hands on her small, perky breasts and squeezed them with an angry passion. Her hands wrapped around his face and pulled him tightly into her embrace. Black could feel something writhing inside his mouth, and at first thought, erotic imagery of her tongue entered his mind.

  Pivoting her head, Perrine utilized her acute mental powers, slamming the door shut, and roughly holding Black down on the bed and dominating her boyfriend with unbridled eroticism.

  “So, what’s the plan,” Gillian urged the men of the group to make a decision. Her hands grappled with her bulging stomach. “This isn’t going well for me. I’m beginning to loathe being pregnant right now.” Her lips smacked together forcing the vomit to retreat back down her esophagus. Gillian’s willpower broken, a thick spray of blue puke showered across the front of the cell and splattered across the floor of the cave.

  “I will help you and be your man for this mission.” Anstice reached out and mentally broke each one of the bamboo bars to Gillian’s cell, turning her free. He then turned his energies towards Shaw and within a few short moments had freed the Lieutenant.

  Black paced about the small room, leaving the bedside of his satisfied partner. His mangled fingers slid back inside their black gloves, tightly filling the crevices with each push. Black’s trembling left hand slid the black eye patch back across his eye, pausing for a brief moment to examine the grotesqueness of his reflected back through the fractured mirror on the far side of the room. The crack had sliced Black’s mirror image diagonally down his face, displaying one half scarred and the other half clean of the Carnelian’s wrath. Black’s use for morality and decency slowly disappeared, swallowing his last ounce of goodness into the chasm of evil, splitting apart his already fragile psyche.

  “Another round?” Perrine purred for her lover to return.

  “I sense our prisoners are getting restless,” Black said, snapping his head around towards Perrine. With another quick turn, Black looked back at his fractured image in the mirror, immediately searching for answers to his questions. His eye caught Perrine zipping up her soft flesh inside the spacesuit, eventually covering over the black bra and panties. “You will make the perfect queen,” he said with a twisted grin, “beautiful, sinister, and ruthless.”

  “Oh, there you go again with the smutty language,” she said, “you know how that charges my engines.” She walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Are you ready to dominate the world with me?”

  “Absolutely, my dear.”

  Shaw reached out for Gillian. “A
re you okay?”

  “Yeah,” Gillian said, “how’s your arm?” She noticed the sizable rip in his right arm.

  “That bitch sank her teeth in me,” Shaw growled. He briefly gazed at the bloody wound. “I’ll tell you one thing, if I ever see those dogs again, a veterinarian will be the least of their worries.”

  Wisely interrupting Shaw’s speech, Anstice ordered the gang to remain focused. “You don’t have much time.”

  “Why?” Shaw quizzed the older survivor.

  “Black’s growing specimens in the lab,” he answered, “and, it won’t be a pretty sight once those soldiers are unleashed on your men and women.”

  “How can we stop them?” Gillian asked. “And where’s the lab?”

  “I will lead you to the lab,” Anstice said, “you will have to find the control panel located on the northern end of the laboratory. Once you find it, enter the code Genesis in the computer’s mainframe. The system is primitive, but it’s the lifeline for the specimen’s. Once you enter the code, their canisters will begin to dilute, and the after effects will result in their immediate death.”

  “Anything else?” Shaw asked.

  “Perrine has perfected the cloning machine left behind by my fellow scientists,” Anstice chortled back a dangerous cough. He could feel the alien within him beginning to overtake his body. “I don’t have much time.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his grizzled hand.

  “A cloning machine?” Gillian’s interests perked up.

  “Yeah, my people built it to research science and the unique animals that roam this planet.”

  “Animals?” Shaw wanted to know more about them.

  “I really don’t have time to get into all that right now,” he stated, “just be forewarned that Black among others inside the Carnelian circle of power, has the power to mentally control these animals.”

  “Peachy frickin’ keen,” Shaw chirped away.

  “Once we found out about the plants and animals, we decided to go ahead and cloned certain species to study them and learn more about our planet. You know, in the name of science. We were a very technologically advanced race.”

  Shaw said with a grin, “I’ll find you a nice girl to settle down with and maybe you can extend your family tree by another branch, or two.”

  “That’s very kind, but I feel that time is one luxury I do not have right now,” Anstice said bravely fighting back another volcanic cough.

  “Okay, enough with the Dr. Phil talk. Lead us to the lab,” Gillian urged Anstice.

  “Who is this Dr. Phil?” Anstice asked.

  “Never mind.” Shaw waved off Gillian’s rant.

  “You will need weapons,” Anstice said, “I have just the thing.” He walked back to his cell and sifted through the dirt, eventually uncovering a small silver pistol.

  “I kinda brought my own,” Shaw reached down and lifted up his pant leg, exposing a smaller version of the Plasma Shooter. “I also have some C-4 left as well.” Shaw tapped his pockets. “An experienced Lieutenant always comes to the party bringing gifts.”

  “What about them?” Gillian nodded in the direction of the other survivors. “I’ll take that nifty pistol however. Where did you get it?”

  “I lifted it off one of the dead soldiers in the room some days ago.”

  Shaw prepared himself for his daring plan. “I say we storm the lab, crash the party and create the mother of all diversions, and then our friends here can scamper their way out of the caves to safety.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Gillian said, “let’s go.”

  Crash and Burn

  Simon and Bud ran hard to catch up to Kaspar and the Captain, as the four men raced across the beach, following the spacecraft’s descending trajectory.

  “And from the Heaven’s,” Simon recited his own lyrical passage.

  “Now is not the time for another one of your inspired sermons.” Kaspar wedged his way between Simon and the Captain and tautly brought the binoculars up to his face once more. “She’s in trouble.”

  “How can you tell?” Page asked, waiting for his turn to look at the spacecraft. It eventually came as Kaspar passed along the binoculars to the Captain.

  “I once had a close friend, Ulysses,” Kaspar fondly remembered his old colleague. “He was an engineer, a damn fine one at that,” he said. “He always told me that when a ship comes in that fast, its in trouble. Major trouble to be exact. And, she’s not too far out.”

  “Could there be survivors on board?” Simon asked.

  “Only one way to find out,” Bud chimed in from the rear of the group.

  “How’s that?” Simon prodded.

  “We organize a search and rescue.”

  “With what?” Simon became frazzled. “Have you looked around? We’re on a fucking beach, let alone a planet that we know nothing about.”

  “Someone forgot to take their Prozac,” Page quipped. “Hey, that doesn’t look right.”

  “What doesn’t?” Kaspar asked, reaching for the binoculars, eager for another look.

  “Is a ship supposed to glow like that?” Page inquired.

  “Fuck me, that’s the self-destruct system,” Kaspar said looking through the lenses. “There must be some activity in the cockpit.”

  “So, now what?” Simon asked.

  “Cover your ears,” Kaspar answered back.

  The Athena’s glow, a bright orange and red hue amazed everyone, before exploding in mid-air, hurtling debris across the oceanic landscape.

  “Well, here comes your answer,” Bud said pointing to the bright night sky.

  “Cover! Cover!” Kaspar shouted while he reached out grabbing Page and pulling him violently to the left, covering him with his own body. Bud meanwhile, saw all along what was happening, and dove head first into the water. Above, Bud could hear the soft pinging of debris falling through the oceanic surface.

  Simon’s eyes widened as a behemoth sheet of metal hurtled towards him. Frozen in fear, Simon’s legs became sticks of cement in the breaking sand. The blond tipped head of the famous preacher rolled across the light brown, grainy sand. Simon’s eyes forever etched in a terrified, lunacy stare. His mouth half-open, caught in a horrified scream that never was released from his lyrical lips. In the devastating wake of Simon’s sudden death, a continuous stream of red erupted from the headless corpse of Simon Latimer.

  “Did you hear that?” Black grabbed Perrine by the hand. “That massive eruption?”

  “That?” She said with a nod of her head. “That was you rocking my world.”

  “Oh stop the sex games,” he ordered, “it’s time to meet our leader.”

  “Oh, you’re such a party pooper,” she chided Black’s serious nature. “You know, all work and no play, makes Mr. Black a very lonely guy.”

  “Excuse me as I prepare to rule the galaxy.” Black reached for Shaw’s rifle.

  “Oh stop being so over dramatic,” she said with a smile. “Relax, I have everything under control. Our new army is moments away from awakening and then it will be over.”

  “So, does everybody have the plan?” Shaw armed his Plasma shooter. “Does anyone know where my rifle is?”

  “They probably took your weapon when they defeated you,” Anstice said.

  “I wasn’t defeated ,” Shaw said defiantly, “I was cleverly ambushed.”

  “By a girl,” Gillian added. “At least it took a bullet to take me down.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Shaw shot back. “I had to fight off the kung fu ninja chick.”

  “Can we go please?” Anstice urged the group to continue along with the plan. “I have to say, the two of you are very annoying.”

  “What can I say? We’re an acquired taste,” Shaw replied.

  “In any case, follow me, right down this corridor ,” Anstice ordered Shaw.

  “You guys wait here and wait for the diversion.”

  “How many soldiers are in the caves?” Gillian asked.

  “Not many. Most are all on foot pa
trol searching out the rest of you. Ironically, a very thin line of defense is down here in the caves. Their ego’s are so inflated, that they really can’t envision a surprise attack inside the caves.” Anstice poked his head around the corner. “I’ve always said that these small aliens always had small brains. Okay, all clear.”

  The trio made their way down the dark corridor, eventually reaching the laboratory’s outer perimeter.

  “Listen, let me go in first,” Anstice offered, “if they are in there, they will not think twice of questioning why I am there. After all, I am one of them now, well, in their opinion anyway.”

  “Okay, we will hang back,” Shaw said, “but, if I smell an ounce of trouble, I’m coming in guns blazing.”

  “Yeah, I got it, now hush,” Anstice said, pacing his steps towards the glass doors, and taking a needed breath. His hand waved over the red sensor prompting the door’s to slide open, allowing entry into the mysterious lab.

  “Ah, Anny, we’ve been wondering when you’d be coming back to see us,” Black greeted his visitor, “how are we doing today?”

  “I’m feeling a bit under the weather,” Anstice said, delivering another brutal cough.

  “My, that’s a nasty one you got there,” Black walked across the cracked tiles and approached Anstice. “Are you ready to experience our new super army?”

  “Experience?”

  “Well, once they are awakened, they will need to feed, and well, we really have no further use for an old man like yourself.”

  “I am the last of a great race,” Anstice said attempting to buy more time. He could feel the Carnelian inside his throat, crawling up his esophagus. His body was oddly becoming stronger, almost as if it were rejecting the foreign entity within him. “I could say the same about you.”

  Black lowered his head and unleashed a hard jab, pounding the old man’s stomach. “I’ve had it with the lack of respect around here.” His fingers gripped the rifle and brought high above his head, ready to deliver the final blow to Anstice.

  “Now, now, don’t you know it isn’t polite to mistreat a house guest?” That irritating voice bellowed to Black.