 |
| Published in Issue 22, Volume 10 of Schlock! Magazine Reprinted in Volume 2, Issue 9 of Schlock! Quarterly magazine |
We’re
three days into trudging through the jungles of New Guinea at a snail’s pace
when Doctor Wilkiss says:
“She
was supposed to be my baby, you know.”
Lieutenant
Perez nods, halfway through hacking into a wall of monster ferns. Edington
bites, as usual. The Corporal has always been a sucker for a good story.
“Couldn’t
find a proper woman to take you on Wilkiss?”
“I’ve
had more women than you’ve bedded whores, Edington. But none of them mattered
more than Yumie.” Doctor Wilkiss hisses at Edington. “Now there was a woman: pretty as a picture and sharper than a razor
blade. The kind of woman that could make a man worthy of her king of the world
or bring him crashing down into the dirt, smashing him into a billion pieces
along the way.”
“Looking
at you right now, I’d say it was the latter.” I say. Doctor Wilkiss’ head snaps
toward me, transfixing me with a dirty look. Edington gets a chuckle out of it.
“I’d
say Liang’s got a point. You’re not looking too hot, from where I’m standing!”
“Yumie
took me in, when she realized my quiet contempt for the world. She pulled me
out of the black pit of despair the scientific community had thrown me into.
Did you know they made me a Nobel nominee, just to spite me? Dragged me all the
way to that pompous, cold hall in Stockholm just to make me watch that dolt
Sancar get the prize! Yumie held my hand all the way through, kept me from
spitting in their faces.”
“So
you retreated in your lair in the boondocks and plotted how to show them all?”
I say. Edington cackles like an evil genius straight out of a Z-list horror
movie.
“I
shall creeate a race ov atomic zupermen, vich vill conquer the vorld!”
“Corproral
Edington!” Perez snaps. “Quit quoting Lugosi and get the hell up here! I need
you!”
Edington
mutters something under his breath and jumps through the foliage, machete in
hand. Doctor Wilkiss turns toward me, teeth bared in a wolflike grin. “He’s a
good dog, Edington. Are you putting him up for adoption yet?”
“Not
until we get him spayed.” I say, barely holding back a smile. From the corner
of my eye, I catch the look Wilkiss gives me, the way his eyes dart from my breasts
to my face and back again. Perez was right, when he suggested I’d make for a
great deterrent. For all his genius, the good doctor can’t help himself when it
comes to women with attitude.
***
“What
is your name, soldier?” he asks me, while we’re wading through a small
clearing, rushing to escape the midday mosquito rush.
“Liang,
Private First Class.”
“You’re
a little old to be a Private. I’m guessing you were demoted, yes?”
I
lean my head down and pop my collar. Even through the layers of Kevlar, the
infernal buzz of mosquitoes comes through my helmet. “Pretty much.”
“Where
was that, Kabul? No way you’re old enough. Punjab perhaps? There was a lot of
belly aching over all those children that the Army doused with white
phosphorus. Then again, you could have been in Kaepung. I hear that the South
Koreans made all those concentration camps go away, after the war was over.”
“Amguema.
The Big Rattle and Roll.” I say, just to get him off my back. I can almost hear
Doctor Wilkiss scowling at the mere mention of the name.
“The
greatest land battle in history and they name it after a children’s toy. A
hundred thousand men and women scorching the earth, soaking the snow with their
own blood for an inch of land at a time and we make it into a footnote in our
histories. Is that fair?”
“Well,
I didn’t get that raw a deal.” I tell the good doctor, flexing my prosthetic
arm. I watch with glee as the mosquitoes struggle to break through the
flexi-skin sheathe only to find a solid casing of plasteel and wires
underneath. “Edington got himself a new spine, too. The Lieutenant’s the only
one that didn’t get any cool toys to play with. That’s why we nicknamed him
‘Meatman’, I guess.”
“He’s
an ape like all the rest, thrashing in the night against the technological
boon. Yumie and I knew that the future lay in intelligent augmentation. She
believed that, if we were to manipulate the world into generating bigger,
better, stronger adversities, we could fuel a new stage in the evolution of the
human race. Of course, I believed her too.”
“You
could have just let history run its course.” I say.
“Is
that so? Then I believe you could have kept yourself from killing two hundred
prisoners of war with nerve gas, too.”
***
“GPS
is shot to shit.” Perez informs us, on the sixth day into the green inferno.
Looking at the frozen screen, he points southwest toward the distant trail
leading back to Tori. “By my account, we’re about a klik off course. Team Wagner
is at least twenty kilometers north of here and even if we haul ass, we ain’t
gonna make the rendezvous in time.”
“So
that’s it? We just missed the big secret lair shootout?” Edington says, kicking
at wet dirt.
“What’s
important is that we got our target with as little fuss as possible.” Perez
says “All we have to do is get him to the extraction point, then piss off back
to Manila. This setback’s been a blessing in disguise, if you ask me. I think I
speak for all of us when I say that we’ve had our fair share of getting shot at
in new and exotic locales.”
“I
think Edington’s just salty he won’t get to piss in Doctor Wilkiss’
gene-warping cauldron.” I say. That gets a laugh out of both of them.
“None
of them is going to make it that far. The Pair
Dadeni wasn’t supposed to be a super-lab.” Doctor Wilkiss says. “It was
always intended to serve as a simulated habitat, to ease our new breeds into
the wild. We always made sure to keep our projects and notes in our personal
laboratories, just to work around the eventuality of knuckle-dragging grunts
wrecking our collective efforts.”
“Couldn’t
you have bothered with that bit of info when we pulled your ass out of the fire
in Tori?” Perez snarls. Doctor Wilkiss waves him away.
“I couldn’t
risk having a bunch of Delta drop-outs getting in way of my revenge,
Lieutenant. It was never my intention to let my esteemed back-stabbing
colleagues go. Not after what they did to Yumie and me. Trust me: not a single
one of them has made it back to their respective hide-outs.”
“This
isn’t a goddamn comic book, Wilkiss! You can’t just compromise our mission to
bunch of hired guns and hope for the best!” Edington snarls.
“Hired
guns? Why would I bother with a bunch of thugs, when I have Abigail? She’s far
more thorough than any man could ever hope to be.”
Something
howls like a woman from the deepest, darkest recesses of the jungle. A flock of
striated herons shoots up from the trees and disperses. There’s a moment of
stunned silence in the boondocks.
“Sounds
like she’s gotten to Doctor Thoreau already. Atta girl.”
***
“What
the hell is Abigail?” I ask Doctor Wilkiss at two in the morning, with my gun
pressed against his skull. He blinks the sleep out of his eyes and smiles.
“I
told you, Private Liang: she is our baby. Mine and Yumie’s proudest
achievement.”
“No
more of this mad scientist bullshit, Wilkiss.” my prosthetic hand grasps his
receding hairs and tugs, with enough force to snap his neck back. “You give me
the answers I want or I’ll snap your neck like a twig, swear to God.”
“Abigail
is an Utahraptor baseline template, enhanced with certain…traits that we added
with Yumie, to make up for the missing links in its damaged DNA. Naturally, we
chose the ones we considered would make her the apex predator in an ecosystem
where she could be introduced. Please, let me go.”
“What
the hell did you put in her, Doctor?”
“Cone
snail DNA, just enough to give her the capacity to generate a potent venom.
Stonefish synapses, to allow for faster-than-life reflexes. A dash of hyena, to
allow her to develop the necessary jaw musculature to chew through anything. It
complimented the extra row of teeth she got from the Great White perfectly.
Leopards were low on the list, but it allowed Abigail to move in hunting
sprints. We added just a smidge of octopus, to account for a capacity to
camouflage and limited regeneration. Finally, to make sure she would be smart
enough to use these gifts to their fullest extent…” Doctor Wilkiss says,
pointing at the hexagonal scar on the side of his head. “We gave her the
necessary brain power. Mine and Yumie’s. The capacity for intelligence, coupled
with certain antisocial traits. We believed it would make for a great deterrent
in controlling her future offspring populations.”
I
let go of his head and press my knee against the small of his back. Leaning
into him, I whisper: “I told you not to mess with me, Doctor.”
“Believe
me, Private Liang, I am not. We made Abigail to last. It’s a shame she killed
all of her suitors.” he says, panting. I realize that my manhandling is arousing
him, so I let go. Doctor Wilkiss looks up at me, disappointed. “Yumie was the
last one to try and beat her into submission. I tried to advise her against it,
but you know how that turned out.”
***
“We
can’t afford to backtrack, Private.” Perez says, without pausing in his
dry-shave. Even in the sweltering heat, he keeps his face nice and neat.
Edington pauses in the middle of putting his Daewoo K11 back together.
“You
can’t be serious.” Edington says. “For all we know, the mad bastard’s telling
the truth! I mean, you saw the shit he had back in his lab, right?”
“All
we saw were a bunch of writhing, snapping blobs of nothing that mewled in their
cages, Corporal. Not a single one of them was capable of tearing apart a cat,
never mind an able-bodied black ops team.”
“What
about Yumie, then? What reduced her to a bunch of mince-meat, huh? You said it
yourself: whatever tore her apart had to be as big as a Great White, at least!”
I say. Perez cleans his razor and sticks it back into his survival kit, before
turning to face me.
“We’re
at least three days off schedule, Private. By the time we get there, the
clean-up team would have gone in and wiped their asses with every single
monster in the enclosure. All we need to do is drop off Wilkiss and then get to
Bulldog so we can cool our heels in relative peace and quiet. Hell, we probably
won’t even get to fire our guns once.”
“Goddamn
it Perez, when was the last time you heard from the clean-up team, huh? How do
we know that Abigail hasn’t gotten to them? How do we even know we’re going to
make it?” I say, my voice tinged with the slightest hint of hysteria. Perez tutts
with disgust, before reaching for his radio.
“Team
Wagner, this is Valkyrie. What’s your status?”
A
gentle hiss of static pours out from the speaker. Perez scowls before trying again.
“Team
Wagner, this is Valkyrie, what is your status, over?”
Static
again, broken by soft, whistling noises. A soft purr comes from the other end.
“Must
be the foliage blocking our signal. We’ll try again once we’re past the ridge.”
Perez says, by way of explanation. Edington shoots me a worried glance. “Hands
off cocks and on with socks, we’re moving out.”
Somewhere
in the distance, something yaps evilly at the sun. The metallic scent of blood
and the chemical smell of reptile dung reach us, borne on the eastern wind.
“Sir,
yes sir.” I say as I go to fetch Doctor Wilkiss.
***
The
sounds of mating tree kangaroos keep me up during my watch. We’re barely a
day’s walk away from the rendezvous point and still no response from the
cleanup team. Out in the darkness, hunched furry forms are locked in mortal
combat over a dying heron. By the time I’ve heard the gentle rustling noise of Doctor
Wilkiss’ footsteps, he’s already got the KA-BAR knife pressed against my
throat.
“Don’t
try to fight back, Liang. I’d hate to have to kill you. There are things that
you must know.” his whisper sounds like a viper slithering off its discarded
layer of skin. “Abigail is close now, on her way to new pastures. I gather that
she’s already had your clean-up team and has developed a taste for warm-blooded
omnivores with too much protein in their bloodstream. Chances are she will soon
attempt to move to more populated areas. I am about to let go of your mouth. Do
not try to scream, or I will slit your throat. Understood?”
I
nod, as he lets go. His grip on my shoulders weakens. I can feel him sniffing
at my hair, taking in the scent of sweat and the barest whiff of lavender from
my last proper shower six days ago.
“What
are you going to do? Run off into the jungle? You know we could track you
down.”
“I’m
not running, Private. I’m off to meet Abigail. All you and your commanding
officer have to do is run like hell for two days eastwards. You should reach a
small research facility, one that belonged to good old Doctor Ulyanov. He had
the entire thing stocked with enough food to survive a nuclear winter. Stay
there and make sure you don’t come out until the screaming stops.” he says, as
he lets go of me, his knife slowly retreating from my neck, gently caressing
the outline of my carotid as it goes.
“What
are you going to do? When you find her?”
“What
a proper father should do for his unruly children: I am going to give her a
long-overdue lesson in humility.”
I’m
reaching for my gun, when Doctor Wilkiss strikes me at the side of the head
with a rock.
***
“Fucking
hell, Liang!” Perez says, kicking at the embers of the extinguished fire pit.
Edington is hard at work pretending to fold his knapsack. “How the hell did he
get past you?”
“He
brained me with a rock, damn it! What’s your excuse?” I hiss. Perez grits his
teeth like an angry pit-bull, before turning to Edington.
“Get
your shit together. We’re going after the bastard!”
“I
think it would be best if we just headed for the Russkie’s hideout.” Edington
mutters.
“Please
tell me you’re kidding.” Perez snarls.
“Lieutenant,
look: we haven’t had any contact with the clean-up team, we’ve lost our target
and we’re stuck in the middle of the bloody jungle with a thing that’s straight
out of science fiction. I say we cut our losses…” I begin, just as Lieutenant
Perez’s boot connects with Edington’s ass.
“Get.
Your gear. We’re going after the mad asshole. And if I hear a single thing
about that Abigail again I swear to God I’ll…”
In
the distance, fire mushrooms out from the tree-tops. The chemical stink of
napalm fills the air. Something howls evilly, yapping like a hyena bitch at the
peak of her estrus. The boondocks shudder, hammered by monstrous feet. Perez
clutches his M27 IAR to his chest, as if looking to it for comfort.
“What
was that?” Edington whimpers.
“I
think it’s Wilkiss’ idea of a spanking.”
***
We’re
heading east toward the bunker, when the next battery of explosions rocks the
jungle. An entire hill is enveloped in flames, sending shrapnel flying. In the
overwhelming cacophony, I catch a dissonant human shriek. Against my better
judgement, I find myself praying that this wasn’t Doctor Wilkiss’ final stand.
That Abigail went down in the explosion and that her scaly corpse is sizzling
in the hellish heat of an impromptu rainforest fire.
“I
think that’s taken care of…” Edington says, just as an ear-splitting roar
rebounds all around us.
“It’s
getting closer.” I say, barely holding back a whimper.
“Must
be around half a kilometer away. It can’t have noticed us, not from this
distance. Not with all this smoke.” Perez says, even as his jog is slowly
turning into a run.
“Wilkiss
said Abigail was part octopus! Maybe it’s got feelers. Maybe it can find us, if
it just finds his tracks. We need to burn them.” I say.
“Burn
what? The entire goddamn rainforest?” Edington says.
“If
we have to.” I say, as I remove my XM25 CDTE from its holster and launch its
25mm incendiary grenade. They were supposed to have been last-resort weapons,
intended to eliminate any identifiable traces of our target in the event of a
FUBAR. All things considered, this situation wasn’t too far off.
We
watch the M14 grenade as it arcs into the sky, falters and finally impacts with
the thick carpet of dead leaves underneath, unleashing its thermite payload on
detonation. Its flame burns white-hot, enveloping the surrounding trees. Plant
matter is reduced to ashes in seconds.
“For
fuck’s sake, Liang!” Perez says, but doesn’t stop me. Two more M14s come down,
creating a wall of hungry flame.
“Move
goddamn it, move!” I howl at them. Thankfully, they begin to haul ass without
the slightest signs of protest. Edington jumps like a mountain goat, skipping
over tree branches like stepping stones, his rifle held high. Perez grits his
teeth as he descends. I count each step, checking my remaining M14 grenades.
Just three left. I should make them count.
“I
can see a clearing! We just need to reach the clearing…” Edington says, before
his voice gets choked out by Perez’s awful howling. I turn around, just in time
to see a pair of long-snouted jaws with two rows of pearly white teeth, clamped
down around Edington’s waist. The Corporal struggles to free his assault rifle,
but the jaws move to and fro, making him flail around like a ragdoll. Stray
rounds clip at tree trunks all around us. Perez falls to the ground, struck on
the thigh by a stray 5.56mm round. By the time Abigail steps into the
mid-morning sunlight, he’s screamed himself hoarse.
Even
in her charred and burned state, she is awesome to behold. Six meters of pure muscle,
wrapped in a Cretaceous scaled frame with a skin mottled in places. Unnaturally
long arms with five fingered, taloned hands clutch at the empty air. Her long
snout is crooked, fit to bursting with glistening arrowhead teeth. Her claws,
as long as combat knives, clatter as they graze against the bare earth beneath
her. Her tail whips viciously in the air as she snaps her head, sending
Edington’s upper half soaring through the air in a madcap whirl. Abigail’s eyes
turn madly in their sockets, focus as they take in her new prey and I notice
the compact black tint of her irises, the all-too-human way in which they
squint and bring us into focus.
Abigail
opens her mouth and lets out a deep, rumbling purr. Bits of Edington’s legs
fall to the ground, ground meat and crushed servos wrapped in torn camo fabric
and I can barely keep myself from laughing.
Looks like she chewed into a burrito without taking
off the wrapping…
Perez
brings his machine-gun to the front and pulls the trigger before I can stop
him. High-caliber rounds punch into Abigail’s skin, leaving gushing pockmarks
behind. She screeches in outrage before leaping onto the Lieutenant. In the
blink of an eye, she has sunk her vicious teeth into his shoulder, tearing at
the meat and crunching the bone. By the time I’ve brought up my own rifle,
Perez’s arm is dangling from Abigail’s teeth.
“Oh
God, oh God, oh God…” Perez is moaning, blood spurting from the ravaged gash
where his arm used to be. He reaches out with his remaining hand, tugging at
his still-flexing severed fingers, trying to pry his limb away from her teeth as
if it were a stolen toy.
I
turn and run, bolting for the denser greenery. Perez’s screams die down after a
while. There’s a soft, crunching noise as Abigail stuff her face with prime
US-Marine-bred meat. When she is finally done, the jungle is quiet, save for
the rumbling sound of the thermite-induced wall of flame, spreading ever
outward. I pull my rifle tightly against my chest and bite my lip, struggling
to still my thumping heart. When that fails, I check my rounds: 3 magazines of
AP bullets, three grenades left. I load one into the rifle, praying that I’ll
somehow figure out how to make them count.
“Psst.
Liang.” the voice coming from the undergrowth makes me jump. Edington’s arm
flails around, trying to grasp at my leg. “Help me up, will you?”
I reach
down and grasp his arm, pulling him out. A length of optic fibre and hydraulic
cable viscera is sprawled out where his legs should be. Edington is spilling
blood and coolant from the gash where his legs should be.
“She
got a nibble and then spat me out. I think Wilkiss put more Great White in that
scaly bitch than he ought to…” Edington says. I try to hold back a giggle, but
fail. “Perez is dead, isn’t he?”
“The
Meatman has left the building…” I nod. Edington attempts to smile. Blood and Freon
dribble out of his lips.
“You’re
going to need bait…”
“Corporal,
no…”
“You
need to draw out that beast, so you can get the drop on it.”
“Please
don’t say it…”
“Give
me those M14s. if it gets near me again, I could detonate them in her face.
Give that bitch a proper suntan.”
“You’re
not in a goddamn Rambo movie, you idiot! We don’t even know if that’s going to
kill her!”
“It
might not, but it sure as hell will give you plenty of time to get away.”
“You’re
a dumbass, Edington.” I say, as I grab him by what’s left of his bandolier and
prepare to hoist him up. Edington pushes against me, his hand darting for my
grenades. His hands tear them out from their holsters. “You dirty little…”
Edington
pulls his service revolver from his shoulder holster and fires three shots into
the air. Abigail lets out a long, vicious hiss and then comes charging toward
us. “Make it count, Private!” Edington grins at me, just as I push him away.
Abigail
bursts out from the trees, showering us with stray leaves and splinters.
Edington pulls on the trigger once, twice, three times, the small-caliber
bullets barely making mosquito-bite wounds on her skin. Abigail opens her mouth
wide, snaps her teeth. Edington’s shooting arm is gone in the blink of an eye.
By the time Edington has released the M14s’ safety pins, Abigail has jumped ten
feet into the air and straight into my path. The Corporal disappears in a
blinding flash of hungry light, reduced to ashes.
I
pull the trigger, watching the first rounds poke holes across Abigail’s skin.
She begins to bob and weave around me, dancing around my pointed gun. From the
corner of my eye, I see her crouch, ready to make her final pounce. My
flesh-hand is numb from the kick-back. I gently press the trigger just as she
jumps into the air, leaving herself open. My rifle lets out the awful, tiny klik-klik-klik noise, letting me know
that my chamber is empty just as her crooked leg talon rips into my body armor
and rakes itself across one of my breasts. The pain is excruciating. Abigail
leans into me, her mouth opening wide to reveal a long, milky-white tongue,
dripping with venom. I let out a tiny, useless whimper and wonder, for a
moment, if perhaps she had coated her claws with venom beforehand.
Dead before I hit the ground. Now that would be nice.
Abigail
takes me in with her eyes, divides me into bite-sized portions with
lightning-quick calculations. Her taloned hands rip and tear at my armor. Her
leg pins down my flesh arm and then twists so it breaks my arm in three places.
Pain blossoms in my field of vision, as I bring my augmented arm up her snout,
clenching it into a fist. Gritting my teeth, I rev the prosthetic’s engines
into overdrive and unleash an accelerated one-inch punch into Abigail’s eye
before blacking out.
Something
warm and wet splashes against my face. I spit it out, when I come to. Blinking
away the pain, I take in the scene:
Abigail,
screaming as she clutches at the ruined socket where her eye used to be.
The
smell of burnt plastic and the gentle fizzle of useless machinery, coming from
my augmented hand.
The
familiar weight of the XM25, resting against my leg.
I
reach out for it with my flesh arm, but the thing is bent like a crazy straw,
all but useless. Rolling out of Abigail’s stomping path, I grasp the rifle with
my prosthetic arm and pull it in. The fingers twitch spasmodically to the
motley rhythm of Abigail’s shifting skin color. She yelps and howls, letting
out tiny noises that could be words. I wonder if Yumie and Wilkiss ever tried
teaching her how to speak. I wouldn’t have put it past the bastards.
Abigail
turns to me, stomping on the ground, head bent low. She’s mad enough not to
care about the rifle. She doesn’t bother with the complexities of dodging
anything I throw at her. Her monstrous tongue whips out and lashes at my chest,
smacking against the armor underneath. Poison hisses against layers of Kevlar.
Her mouth opens wide, revealing the fleshy grotto of her mouth layered with the
neat formation of blood-streaked teeth. Abigail’s breath smells of rotten meat
and poppies.
I
pull the trigger, releasing the final M14 grenade into her gullet. The
explosion launches me off my feet, makes me roll down into a bed of thick
ferns. In front of me, Abigail is breathing out a steady stream of white-hot
fire. I watch the flames race up her gums, creating the ridge of her lips
before setting her eyes ablaze.
“How
do you like that iron oxide burn, you murderous slag?” I scream at her. Abigail
coughs and shrieks, as she rolls down on the ground. She’s still kicking, even
after the flames have reduced half her head into a mass of burnt skull and
charred bone.
***
The
extraction team shows up two days’ later, drawn by the looping message
broadcast from Doctor Ulyanov’s bunker. By the sounds the combat medic makes
when he examines me, I can tell I don’t make for a pretty sight.
“Where
the hell is Team Wagner? Where’s Wilkiss?” a man in a Balaklava asks me. He
still wears his full combat gear, even in the sweltering July heat.
“The
Meatman’s gone. Edington’s up in flames. The good doctor’s all smoke and
cauldrons.” I mutter. The man in combat gear doesn’t seem to like it, but it’s
all I’ve got.
“Get
her out of here. And get me General Cho on the phone. I need a burn notice on
this place.” he barks at his subordinates. They scatter like blind-sided
raccoons. “Goddamn it, what happened here?”
“Abigail…ask
Abigail…” I whimper, as the morphine shot pulls me into the dark, dreamless
place beyond pain.
Post a Comment
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου