by Kyle Noe
The gas seeped into her nose and mouth, and soon she was tottering like she was drunk. Then she was falling, falling into the nothingness as darkness devoured everything.
Chapter Eleven: Scraps
Giovanni, Luke, and the remaining resistance fighters moved like ghosts through the jungle. They stopped only once, in a mini-clearing that was black-shadowed and sepulchral. Here they ate half-rotten fruit that had fallen to the ground, listening to the high-pitched chittering of the jungle insects. Not that different from the chittering he’d heard coming from the Syndicate fighters’ helmets.
Giovanni crouched next to Luke, watching a fat-bellied snake work its way up a rubber tree. “I’m sorry about Tara and Jennings.”
“Tara was good people, but she could be a handful,” Luke said. “Jennings on the other hand, that man was something else. Helluva strategist,” Luke continued. “I hope to God he crossed over quickly.”
“Never even felt it,” Giovanni lied.
Luke breathed deep, his eyes glistening. Recognizing the reservation in Giovanni’s eyes.
“He meant something to you, huh?” Giovanni asked.
“Me and him, we served time together. Maybe, we made nice.” He shrugged. “Good soul.”
“Prison?”
Luke’s eyebrows converged, annoyed. “No. Fucking Sunday school, Giovanni. Of course it was prison.”
A smirk etched Giovanni’s face. “What’d you do?” Regretting the question before it was out of his mouth.
“What didn’t I do is the better question.”
“I figured,” Giovanni said.
“How’d you know?”
“Mostly,” Giovanni chuckled, “the way you fought.”
Luke tilted his head, a hint of a smile toying with his lips. “And how’s that?”
“Like a man who didn’t have anything to lose. Like someone who knows what it’s like to have his freedom on the line.”
“Shit, we could all say that now, huh?” Luke said.
Giovanni nodded at the truth. He was beginning to warm up to the juggernaut of a man who had intended to kill him earlier in the day. Not such a bad soul.
“Christ,” Luke said, staring into space with a pained expression. “I thought I was the hardest of the hardcore once upon a time. A natural born killer. But of course, that was before I went in ...”
“It can’t have been an easy transition. From prison, I mean.”
“I got out and was lost,” Luke said. “No family, no friends. I mean ... at least in the joint you’re given a routine, y’know? And then I caught wind of Jennings, who was part of some newfangled prepper group. He was going around like Moses, telling people that the fucking end was nigh despite the defense the Global Earth Command was mounting. I still don’t know how he knew so much about the Syndicate and how easily they could defeat us, but know he did, and he made sense, and that did it. I latched on to him and his boys and girls and followed ‘em down here before the world turned over. That’s how we got out in the first place. Some guards sympathized with us. In exchange for being involved and protected if we were right, they helped us get out.”
“Shit,” Giovanni said, shaking his head.
Luke offered him a pull from his canteen. “I’m doing a lot of talking here.”
“That’s ‘cause you’ve got a backstory.”
“I ain’t never met a Marine or soldier who didn’t.”
Giovanni drained the canteen, staring at the ground. “In my family there was this tradition that when you turned four, your parents dropped five objects on the ground in front of you. A miniature guitar, a compass, a stethoscope, a pen, and a ball. The idea was that whatever you went for first would define who you are and what you were to become.”
“That’s fucking idiotic,” Luke said.
“Most traditions are.”
At Luke's chuckle, Giovanni looked up. “I went for the ball.”
“Cause you were an athlete?”
“Because I always wanted to be part of something,” Giovanni said. “Part of a team.”
“And you found that in the Corps, huh?”
“Yep. But that’s all gone now,” Giovanni said with a nod, his voice barely above a whisper.
Luke placed a hand on Giovanni’s shoulder and rose. “Yeah, well, you behave yourself when we get to base, Giovanni, and maybe you’ve got a new family now.”
Giovanni hid a blush and conjured up a faint smile, and they walked back to join the others.
***
Thirty minutes later, they’d crossed a shallow river and hiked down a ravine into the inner recesses of the jungle. Giovanni was surprised to see that a section of jungle had been hacked away. The upper canopy still existed, shielding the space from prying eyes, but the ground had been cleared, the brush burned back.
In place of the undergrowth was a colony of shacks, some made of wood and punched-tin and others of concrete block. The structures were positioned out and away from a faraway hill that appeared to be dotted with caves, and Giovanni could see what he assumed to be tunnels crisscrossing the ground that lay between the shacks and the caves.
There were solar panels hidden behind screens made of branches and vines, most connected to communication equipment, and a small diesel engine on the back of a rusted truck that pumped water to the colony from a seep that gurgled out a fistful of rock.
“Okay, so… this is it? This is the base,” Giovanni said, suppressing a sigh.
“You were expecting what? Fort fucking Bragg?” Luke replied, before whistling.
The forms moving around the colony, the vaguely visible men and women, ceased moving. Luke whistled again, and everyone grabbed up weapons and moved toward them to assess the situation.
Giovanni saw a tall woman of indeterminate ethnic origin and coal-colored hair at the head of the group. She had striking features, though her tight-fitting camouflage clothes were speckled with bush debris and her tanned face begrimed and needled with sweat. She carried a long black piece of metal, the same kind of sword Giovanni had seen used by the Syndicate soldiers.
“Calee,” Luke said, addressing her. “Or maybe ‘enemy,’ whether you have her back or not.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Giovanni asked.
Luke looked off to the left. “You’ll find out soon enough, son.”
Without response, Calee’s eyes roamed from Giovanni to Luke. After a moment's assessment, she said, “You’re late.”
“We had a bit of a problem,” Luke replied.
“So what? You decided to bring us a stray?” Calee asked, icing Giovanni with a nasty look.
“His name’s Giovanni. He’s a Marine.”
“There are no more Marines,” she snorted.
“We’ve established that. I’m the last,” Giovanni said.
“Do not fucking speak unless spoken to,” Calee said, raising the sword.
“He can fight,” Luke replied, pointing to his own busted lip. “I can testify to that firsthand.”
She considered this for several seconds. “We’ll talk to Jennings about him.”
“Jennings is gone.”
Calee’s face fell. “How?”
“Syndicate sniper. He was ambushed,” Luke said.
The sound of what might have been an aircraft or drop ship somewhere far overhead cut the conversation short as the group ran for cover. Giovanni followed after them into the relative safety of the small colony.
He was surprised to see ample stores of food and non-lethal gear and medical supplies, but very little weaponry. His mind calculated just how quickly they’d all be cut down if the Syndicate found their position. Luke grabbed a banana just starting to turn yellow and lobbed it to Giovanni.
“Might be my last meal,” Giovanni said, as he held it tight.
“Relax,” Luke said with a chuckle. “We’re safe here. The Syndicate won’t bother with us.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Luke cocked his head in thought, then sa
id, “They’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
“The cities?”
Before the ‘net started getting wonky, word was the aliens were working their way up from the southern hemisphere into the northern.”
“How long?” Giovanni asked.
Luke shrugged. “The boys in D.C. and Moscow had the balls to use their nukes, at least in the less populated areas. Tactical shit mostly. Appears to have slowed the Syndicate down, but our best guess is the world will be taking a knee in three or four days.”
“Does anyone have any idea what they want?”
“What does any invader want?” Luke shrugged. “What we got.”
“You ask a lot of questions,” Calee said, overhearing the conversation. “Are you scared or something?”
“No, Ma’am,” Giovanni answered, condescendingly.
“Don’t ‘Ma’am’ me.”
Giovanni held up his hands in mock protest. Calee thrust her saber into the ground. “You know where I got this?”
“Off one of them?” Giovanni said, with confidence and respect.
“Fucking-A-right,” she replied. “If we can kill one of them, we can kill more.”
“I don’t think you have enough swords,” Giovanni said, gesturing at the blade.
“We’ve got more than that,” Luke said, catching a volcanic glare from Calee. She shook her head as if he’d said too much.
“That’s none of his goddamn business, Luke,” she hissed.
“It is now. He’s a pro. He knows how to fight and devise strategies.” Luke gestured at Giovanni. “Go on, tell her.”
Giovanni nodded. “I know how to battle plan, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “I can help you kill them if you want.”
Calee had started to turn away, but stopped at Giovanni’s words and gaped back. “Why would you want to help us?”
“Because we have a common enemy. And they took my friends.”
Chapter Twelve: Trapped
Quinn awoke in a semi-darkened room. She was groggy. Disoriented. She forced her head up and suddenly arched upright, realizing she was strapped in a metal chair facing a wall that was as white as the keys on a piano.
A human in a smock with a respirator covering a portion of his face was standing in front of the wall. There was a device behind him, a metal contraption on steel wheels with a long, swan-like neck, connected to a mass of throbbing tissue that resembled a human lung. The tissue was studded with countless five-inch long needles.
“Where am I?” Quinn asked.
Silence from the Smock.
“Where are the others?”
The Smock remained silent, wheeling the metal contraption up and positioning it behind her.
“That wasn’t very smart,” the Smock eventually said. “You destroying the machine? That goddamn thing cost a lot of credits.” The Smock shook his head. “Nope, not smart at all.”
“If you’re going to kill me, might as well get it over with.”
“I would never do that,” the Smock replied. “I can’t. I’m not authorized even if I wanted to. I just work here. I’m a facilitator,” he said, with a shrug.
“You’re a human?” she asked.
“Depends who you ask,” the Smock replied, the portion of his mouth visible curling up into a smirk.
There was the sound of something powering up, and then Quinn felt hands on the back of her head. A metal halo was soon fitted onto her skull as she squirmed and thrashed about. A million thoughts swirled through her head. Were they erasing her memory? Stealing her combat skills without her sense of self? Turning her into a drone? She imagined herself trapped inside stark red Syndicate Armor, shooting indiscriminately at unarmed civilians. A thought that made her retch.
“Things will be easier if you don’t resist,” the Smock said.
“I won’t submit.” She tried to spit at the Smock, but she couldn’t muster the strength to get it past a drizzle down her lips.
“Everyone says that,” the Smock said wearily, as if he’d done this a thousand times before. “But what they fail to remember is there’s always something that you won’t be able to endure. And the folks in charge here? They’re experts at finding out precisely what that is.”
Quinn felt hands on the back of her head, rubbing something into her scalp in a circular motion. Her nostrils expanded. There was a sickeningly sweet smell of … what? Of spoiled fruit? Of raw meat left outside on a warm summer day? What her mother once called the smell of corruption. Quinn surmised it might be some kind of alien antiseptic. She kicked at her straps, but with no luck.
“Okay, so here’s the deal,” the Smock said, grimacing and walking around to face Quinn. “It’s kinda like what the old book says. If you don’t submit, if you don’t fall upon your knees, they will squeeze you empty and fill you full of themselves. Does that make any sense at all?”
“I can’t hear you,” Quinn said.
The Smock leaned close to Quinn, which gave her a real chance to spit in the Smock’s face. Her volley landed this time, giving her a sense of victory.
“Yeah, okay, that’s to be expected,” the Smock said. “But I still gotta ask you. Do you submit?”
“Fuck you,” Quinn said.
Smock nodded, a note of sadness in his eyes as he pushed a button on a wireless device.
“Fine, fine. No biggie, but be ready to humble yourself,” he said. “They all do eventually. Even the so-called tough ones like you.”
The sound of metal grating against metal echoed, and Quinn could feel the ends of the needles entering the back of her head. A violent convulsion of nausea welled up inside her and a deep groan blasted forth from her lungs.
What came next was a series of frenetic images that assaulted Quinn in discontinuous flutters and flashes. Images ripped from her mind, her memories of her life, her family, her beautiful daughter. Somehow, the Syndicate had been able to slip inside her inner walls, to pry open her memory cells and harvest a lifetime of memories that were now being sorted and resorted and edited into something beautiful and terrible all at once.
Every person she’d ever known or loved flashed past her, their visages melded with scenes of utter depravity, a hailstorm of violent imagery, the kind of things that once seen, can never be unseen. Even events she hadn’t witnessed, but imagined. Her very thoughts were being invaded.
She saw her mother and father drained literally of their life essence, their bodies wasting away to flaps of flesh that were devoured by nightmarish creatures she’d once imagined as a young girl. One of the things had a bulbous stomach, and groaned and heaved and gave birth to an oversized ball of mucous and gore that was revealed to be her daughter Samantha!
Samantha jerked to her feet, and Quinn was grief-stricken that her eyes were as white as boiled eggs. A runner of red drool hung from Samantha’s eyes as she turned to Quinn and began laughing demonically.
Quinn gnashed her teeth and screamed as more of the brutal images bombarded her for what seemed like an eternity, until she was foaming at the mouth and gnawing on the insides of her cheeks and saying a slow prayer for a quick death.
And then finally, when she could take no more of the violent images fired into her skull by the Syndicate, she eased her head back and screamed from the well of her soul—
“I SUBMIT!”
The room was plunged into a murky haze. Quinn’s eyes roller coastered and then came to a halt.
She looked up, and there they were, Milo and Hayden and Renner and the other Marines. Standing around her in a U-shaped room that hummed with white noise, a single window affording a view of deep space.
Quinn blinked.
She was lying on a bench.
Had her fellow Marines been there the entire time? Quinn couldn’t tell, but she was surprised to see that she wasn’t strapped in place.
There was a look of sadness on Milo’s face as he lay a hand on Quinn’s shoulder.
“Would it make you feel better if I tell you, you were the last one?” Mil
o asked.
“The last holdout,” Renner said.
“Our last hope,” Hayden added.
Quinn rubbed her head. “What the hell happened?”
“We were drugged and worse,” Milo replied.
Renner rubbed his ass. “I don’t even wanna know what they did to me.”
“I remember the bad things,” Quinn said, shivering, then muttered, “And I remember some asshole in a white smock.”
“Yep, he got us too,” Milo said. “Some alien doctor.”
“He was human,” she replied.
“Maybe he just took human form,” Milo answered.
“Maybe he was some kind of alien familiar,” Renner added.
Quinn looked down at her leg, the one that had suffered a gunshot wound near her hamstring before. There was no sign of the wound, no pain, no trauma of any kind. She checked her cheek, the other area where she’d been injured, and that had healed too.
“They fixed us up and, pardon the pun, but we’re all ship-shape,” Renner said. “At least from the neck down.”
Quinn glanced around. The other prisoners were gone, including Larry.
“Where’re the others?”
“Oh, they broke hours ago,” Milo said. “We held out a little longer.”
“Go Marines,” Renner said, with a soul-worn smile.
“Where are we?” Quinn asked, still woozy.
“Still on the same godforsaken ship,” Hayden answered.
“What do we do?”
“Whatever the fuck they ask us to do,” Hayden said, expelling some air.
Quinn felt sucker punched.
Dark thoughts toiled within her, and for a moment Quinn lost heart. She found herself wishing she’d died during the invasion, like she was sure Giovanni had. At least he was likely at peace, having died in battle like all good warriors should.
