THE GIRL

WHO’S MADE

OF

LEAVES

Written by H.R. Romero

To Rose,

You are always loved.

The beauty of a Rose, its pure innocence, the glee it brings when it’s greatness is gifted.

The heart of the beholder filled with wonder, the senses are taken, and one by one are lifted.

The eyes compare this single and individual flower, to other types, different kinds, and breeds.

By far it exceeds its expectations, its presence causes delight, by comparison, other flowers are weeds.

The nostrils take in this pleasing aroma, the smell of perfection oozes even from its very name.

The inhaled pollen gently nests inside the smeller; the Rose and the lover become indistinguishably the same.

But alas, perfection, beauty, love, all only mask what is hidden below, a secret that must remain.

The reality of the Rose shows a sorrowful being, saddened by its curse, the potential to cause great pain.

The happiness and the joy, the eternal unquestioning love, the Rose can turn all this to scorn.

The beautiful creation, the sad and scared soul, only too aware of the truth; Every Rose has a Thorn.

Daniel P. Martin

Acknowledgments:

To my wonderfully talented, patient, and brutally honest Beta Readers,

Misty, Meggie, Angelique, Crystal, Lauren, Rachel, Dawn, Amy, Susanna, and Sally.

YouTube.com publishers, authors, producers, friends,

Self-Publishing with Dale, Thank you, Dale. You know the meaning of building a brand and not forgetting those who support you.

Kelli Publish, Thank you, Kelli with an “i”. You are a truly a woman who knows her craft. Thanks for sharing.

Jenna Moreci, Thanks to the only Pegasus-riding, cyborg I know.

Thank you. You are appreciated. Enjoy.

Your friend, H.R. Romero

Chapter One

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for Native Americans.”

-Stephen Hawking

Rum and tobacco caress her skin, leaving behind a thin film of notes, hinting of chocolate and earth. The girl wants to tumble deeper into a restful state of sleep. She has a driving need to dig her toes into the blankets, desiring a feeling of comfort and safety, but here, there are no blankets in which to burrow.

The harsh clank of metal instruments, falling upon a bare metal tray, scrapes at her nerves, making the ends stand at attention. The sharp clamor of the noise pours ice water over her and tells her to wake up, right now.

The aroma of cheap drugstore aftershave soothes and reminds her of better times, but of times she cannot remember. Recollection is a phantom, floating through the room, evading her when she reaches out for it, eluding capture.

Sliding downward again into the sweet molestation of darkness, soft and shadowy tendrils of empty promises coax her into giving in to it. She tries to nestle down into the bed, escaping into the narrow fringes of sleep again. There she can hide within the sanctuary it will provide.

A smart, repetitive slap from the back of a hand, one to each cheek, angers her. She’s awake and annoyed.

“Do you remember anything, R – Zero – Five – E?” says a man, whose lovely face she glimpses only briefly before it fades out again, taking the light with it.

The child hears the question; it’s distant. It’s a ghostly nagging whisper, filtered through a confusion of echoes, bouncing around on the inside of her head, pounding on her tympanic membranes with little tack-hammers, and so, not knowing the question is being directed to her, she ignores it. Who am I? Why am I here?

“Do you remember…” repeats the man, pausing to glance at his watch. He winds it, and then turns to study a nearby chart before continuing his question. “…how you came to be here… at Camp Able?”

The question is more defined this time, taking shape and meaning. Why won’t this man let her just fade into the beckoning abyss. It tugs at her, pinching at her playfully; giggling, grinning, and coercing her to give into blessed unconsciousness.

Only a girl of nine, she lays here, like a fatted lamb, on an abused and stained hospital gurney. The sheets are stretched tightly across it, and tucked in with hospital corners. Its striped pattern is faded along with the dying breaths of the building which houses them. Both are in much in need of a good cleaning.

She struggles to open the lids of her eyes. They flutter like clipped-winged butterflies, confronting their own mortality as they falter. Heavy, unwieldy, curtains of skin, unwilling to comply with her urgent need to let the light in. They are sticky from the insides. She’s been drugged, and the drugs are working.

Like other subjects, who came before, it’s taken three times the recommended, safe, dose to induce a satisfactory level of sedation. If one was to ask the voice speaking to her, it might confirm that it’s typical of her kind…. the mutation… or whatever ‘it’ is. It causes the host’s body to be resistant to the meager collection of pharmaceuticals available on Camp Able’s medical wing.

Who am I? She doesn’t know, so why ask her anyway? When finally, she manages to open her eyes, the world is spinning wildly around her; a carnival ride guaranteed to make her puke. And puke she does.

The girl’s bombarded with external stimulation and visual noise that clatters, and clangs, and turns everything upside down. The world makes no sense to her, whatsoever. Where did she come from? Why is she here? She has not a clue.

She’s an under-baked embryo, emerging from the nurture and protection of a cadaver’s womb. Emerging… no. Instead, grasped by her ankles and yanked out, breech. She’s thrust against her will into a cold calamity of a dying world.

Her throbbing head pulses excruciatingly, at the temples, feeling more cumbersome than it should. The drugs can partially be blamed, along with severe dehydration.

Something’s encircling her head like a soft crown, threatening to cut into the skin. A thin, mesh fabric conceals an injury that she can’t remember receiving. She suffered a blow – to the head – somehow.

Any attempt to raise her skull from the mattress only causes it to loll suddenly, to one side or the other, with a lack of grace that only an alcoholic could so vividly display after a long night at a bar.

A line of concentrated saliva drools from the corner of her mouth intermingled with specks of vomitus.

Waves of nausea grind into her gut, like a punch from the world’s strongest man: he’s a brutish man with a handlebar mustache, and a bald head. He wears a red-striped, one piece. He twists her intestines into great looping knots, the likes of which even the most experienced sailors would be envious.

This room is cold, and also moon-burned white. The lighting from above, from the two oversized and obnoxious surgical lights, is intense. Having no care what the mortals of this world think about them. They are what they are, with no pretense or wishes to be anything else but lights. They laugh at oddities, maladies, and the occasional death from their perches above. They cast a surreal illumination; a false, dead sort of light, having a quality about it that reminds one of a nightmare, and this nightmare is as real as any could be.

There’s a large mirrored glass hanging from one of the walls. Time and humidity have crept in along its edges, slowly finger-nailing the reflective material away from the bubbling back of it and leaving the edges to blacken as the reflective nature of it is leached away to the passing of the years.

A calendar hangs next to the mirror, partially torn, with the year, 1942, at the top. The days have all been crossed out, so the actual date is a mystery. The calendar could be years off for all she knows.

An advertisement for, Lady Guinevere Cigarettes, fills the page, just above the days of the week. It’s a low-rate illustration, drawn by an, underpaid, amateur artist who was most likely overworked enough to commit suicide in lonely alleyway.

The ad displays a knight in shining armor, and a lady; perhaps the Lady Guinevere herself, graces the stage, thereof. The two embrace one another, passionately, arms and legs entangled in feigned passion.

They slobber on one another like wanton animals. Perhaps they both secretly yearn, not for each other but, for another drag. The copy claims that Lady Guinevere Cigarettes are made from only supreme tobacco… a cigarette so smooth you will never love another.

Becoming slowly aware, a presence creeps across the borders of her mixed-up reality. Yes, there’s a man in the room, he’s standing beside her. He’s the source of the smell of rum and tobacco. He’s been the one talking to her all along.

His long white coat is splotched with body fluids. The collar is fraying along its edge. The irregular patterns make brown puddles which are outlined with darker brown-red borders. Maybe an assassin used the white coat as a canvas, on which he finger-painted a terrible confession.

She struggles to think clearly. The brain-fog is clearing. She asks a question of her own, her voice sounds distant and strange to her, it’s muffled in her ears. “What… is it… I’m supposed to remem...?” Her voice drags to a halt. She can only complete the question in her head. Her tongue is swollen and feels like a piece of dry leather in her mouth, sticking to the inside of her gummy cheeks.

Her eyes are sensitive to the sterile white beam shining rudely into her face, insulting her, invading private little spaces she hasn’t even explored yet. All the mushy jelly stuff at the hot, screaming core of her eyeballs wants to burst out, with each painful throb of her brain.

Rivulets of tears squeeze out and careen down onto her small, sallow cheeks. She finds her voice again and slurs, sounding increasingly more impaired than before, “Did you… did you bring me here?” Her head wobbles and nausea crescendos. She’s uncertain if this man is responsible, for her being in this place, in this room, awaiting an unknown fate.

He ignores her question. “No, perhaps you don’t remember. They tell me that was quite a blow you took. A big fall indeed. Amnesia would be my diagnosis. Only a temporary condition I hope. I’m anticipating that it’s temporary anyway. I’m optimistic that you may be able to shed some light, on a way… on any way at all… to correct the state of things as they are now. He lifts a Cherrywood pipe from an empty emesis basin and puffs on it a few times before setting it back down.

“You know,” says another voice, “I wish you wouldn’t smoke that thing in here. These anesthetic gasses are just waiting for a reason to ignite and blow us all to Hell.”

“Me thinks thou dost protest too much, Dr. Jackson,” says the Man-In-The-White-Coat. “It’s helps me relax. Now if you can just get on with it.”

“Okay, suit yourself. I’ll be ready in just a minute.”

Dancing on the ridge of the dream world, she jolts awake, sucking in lungsful of air. Panic crawls up her legs leaving them numb as it ascends. The drugs are losing their influence over her.

What is the word the Man-In-The-White-Coat said? Amnesia? It’s a funny-sounding word. Again, her eyes part, barely enough to see him smiling at her through the slits of her long, wet eyelashes. She’d hopes if she closes them, she’ll find herself far removed from the world she’s found herself in, and instead, she’d be plunked down into a land of fantasy with tall flowing grasses and running horses. But no, she can only see him, the Man-In-The-White-Coat.

He seems like someone who’s trying to hide his guilt as it threatens to real itself by climbing to surface and show on his face. Just like an ordinary garden spider; the Argiope Aurantia, for instance, as it invites an unsuspecting housefly to dine. All the while the cunning spider knows its motives and, ultimately, the outcome for the housefly.

He leans, unpleasantly, over her. He observes and assesses her, scientifically. Poking and prodding. Tapping and thumping and pinching her with some type of surgical instrument, in places that feels wrong for him to see, much less tap or thump or probe. He sighs, scratching the nape of his grimy neck.

Has boredom set in so quickly for him? His rubber surgical gloves grab and pull her hair as he slides his hands across the top of her head looking for notable abnormalities. Something to chart. A milestone reached, a question ticked off with a check mark. He must find her unremarkable and dull she thinks… she hopes.

Maybe if she doesn’t seem exciting to him, he’ll let her go back to where ever she can’t remember coming from. The pulling of her hair diverts her from focusing on the pain of her slashed-open forehead, where the bandage is secured too tightly.

He moves a steady hand towards her. Assaulting her… again. It feels no less intrusive this time than it did before. Her attempt to raise her hands are hindered by something. Her efforts to defend herself from the suddenness of his well-practiced gesture, his very presence, and his uninvited invasion into her life… such as it is, are thwarted.

The rails of the bed shake stiffly, uninterested in her circumstance, they clack against the metal bed frame. The girl fights harder against the hold the tethers have on her. She finds that she’s tied securely. Her struggles are rendered useless. Her ankles and wrists are attached to the gurney. She’s a bug caught in the liquid resin of a conifer, in time she’ll become encased in a prison of inescapable amber.

The rails rattle louder as she resists the uncomfortably tight bonds that dig into her flesh. If they were any tighter, they would act as a tourniquet cutting off the flow of blood. As it is, the blood circulating through her vascular system is significantly reduced, causing her arms and legs to tingle with the lack of oxygen going to the tissue. The sensation of pins and needles make her wiggle her toes, and flex her fingers, to fill them with freshly oxygenated blood. Flexors and extensors work in a jerky fashion to ease the irritating sensation. She’s going nowhere.

Her body is, for the most part, incapacitated due to the noxious potion the Man-In-The-White-Coat injected into her. The dull pulse of hopelessness taking root, and the despair is biting into her, evermore driving home the reality of the situation at hand.

Her brain is fighting the drugs. She’s rousing, but only slightly. Waking in this room, with these two men, is nearly overwhelming to her. Confusion and disorientation at its finest. She’s Alice, rag-dolling headfirst down the rabbit hole. A horrific cocoon of fear spins around her, encases her, smothering her, slowly. It presses her into the repressive, stuffy, sarcophagus of her own being. The last place she can possibly escape. Inside herself.

She pushes, and she struggles until the claustrophobia of the moment flees, but like the incoming of high tide to drown her indefensible and immature shell, it takes baby-steps and creeps back again. Invisible hands of anxiety choke her, meaning to snuff out the miserably dull spark of sanity and hope which remains within her.

Smells of many odd and curious things; noxious medicines, and sanitizers sting the eyes and the nose. Wafts of chemicals rub raw the inside of her nose, sucking the moisture from the membranes, drying them, cracking them.

There is someone positioned near the top of the gurney, next to her head. He’s the one who protested because the Man-In-The-White-Coat wants to smoke ‘that thing” around the anesthesia gasses and ‘blow us all to Hell’. She can only see him, briefly, when on occasion, he leans over her.

He has dark hair; it is thinning, and a scruffy brown beard sprinkled with grey hairs weaving out wildly like hands grasping for long-forgotten youth.

He’s doing things she can’t glimpse. She can, however, hear sharp clinks of glass, upon glass, upon metal. Painfully unintriguing, everyday sounds, which, unless one found themselves strapped to a table in a strange room, with two strange men, wouldn’t typically fill one with anxiety or dread.

“Okay, now I’m ready,” says the protesting man, arranging the Schimmelbusch mask, placing it over her nose. He piles several sheets of loosely woven, 4x4 inch, cotton gauzes, one upon the other in a neat, fluffy, stack upon the delicate wire frame and fine strainer wire. He positions his liver-spotted hands, holding them inches above her face. The man’s holding a tiny glass vial of drop ether, he’s preparing to induce anesthesia. The girl cranes her stiff neck to see, but she still can’t see enough to draw a conclusion as to what her fate will be.

“Uh, oh,” says the protesting man. He removes the Schimmelbusch mask from the girl’s nose, tossing it to his work-table.

“What’s wrong?” says the Man-In-The-White-Coat, not seeing the woman coming this way until it’s too late.

“It’s alright, Rose,” says a tall woman, blowing into the room, her voice is comforting, but there is sadness and fatigue coating the words, only barely discernable. The door the woman opened is heavy and thick and reinforced with a well-ordered pattern of bolt-heads, which protrude from both sides. It’s built to withstand almost any attempt to breach it, from within or from without.

The woman’s hair is a vibrant brown color from where it peeks out from just around the edges of the material of the surgical cap she is wearing. Scant, wavy, grey hair paints her temples, but her youth is still evident. Her eyes are brown; so dark that they are nearly black. All Rose knows is that she likes this lady, and she wants her to help her escape this place.

The woman addressed her as, Rose, when she came into the room, and she likes that name and likes the way it feels on her parched tongue when she mouths it. Rose likes the name much better than, R – Zero – Five – E. The lady reminds Rose of the woman on the cigarette advertisement, on the calendar. She looks like a beautiful lady, from some far away, exotic, court, in a medieval land, complete with long flowing robes that are caught up in the updrafts of a summer’s breeze.

“You! Bastard,” says the tall woman. She spits her words at the Man-In-The-White-Coat.

“Miss Valentine,” the protesting man greets her.

“It’s Doctor,” says Dr. Valentine, correcting the protesting man, and shutting him up.

Rose knows by the tone of Dr. Valentine’s voice that she’s unhappy with the Man-In-The-White-Coat. Very unhappy indeed.

Seeing an opportunity to leave, the protesting man places as much space between him and Dr. Valentine and exits posthaste.

She stomps hard on her heels, crossing the floor to stand directly in front of the Man-In-The-White-Coat.

“Dr. Valentine, I…,” the Man-In-The-White-Coat commences speaking in his own defense. The way he raises his hands in the air and pumps them up and down in front of him, palms down, makes Rose believe he intends to get Dr. Valentine to calm down, without telling her to do so, which might anger her all-the-more. “…I didn’t want to concern you with this. It’s just a small test this time. Nothing too… uh… invasive I assure you. Really, it’s just more of the same-old, same-old. Endless research, you know how it is. Besides, aren’t you supposed to be off-base performing field research on the Turned?”

“This is unacceptable. Who approved this? Was it Connors? Did Major Connors approve this? Well?” Not waiting for an answer that she doesn’t give two fresh monkey craps about, Dr. Valentine clutches the gurney by its handles and pulls it towards her. It fails to roll, but rather just skids a few inches on its hard rubber wheels, making faint black marks on the stained linoleum floor.

Rose watches nervously, still testing the resolve of the tethers. Dr. Valentine searches for the gurney’s brake release. When she finds it, she stomps on it, firmly, with her foot, to make it release. Then Dr. Valentine says, to the Man-In-The-White-Coat, “I told you, Shaw, not this one. I told you I wanted to observe this one for a while longer before you started cutting her up like a god damned lab rat.”

“I just wasn’t thinking, that’s all. Don’t remember discussing it.”

“Well, which one is it? You just weren’t thinking, or you couldn’t remember?”

Rose feels the gurney rolling. Dr. Valentine is wheeling it to the door. Rose can’t see the Man-In-The-White-Coat anymore, but now he has a name, and it’s Dr. Shaw, and she can hear him raising his voice. He’s not pretending to be apologetic anymore. His tone has changed. It’s deeper and more dominating. He’s telling her, with his voice raised, “You’re getting too close to these… these things. You know how important… no, Valentine…, you comprehend how critical it is that we perform the procedures on them.”

“Not on this one, and not right now. She’s different than the others. I saw that much, in the field, when we found her.”

“How is she any different than the others? Other than the color of her eyes you can’t be certain that she’s any different at all. There are countless variations and mutations of the Turned out there. We don’t even know how many people were affected. There’s no telling how many different types of these things there may be based on how it affects the host DNA. Her eyes might simply be another variation of —”

“— I’m not sure… entirely,” she says as she swings the gurney around and pulls the heavy door open, “but there’s one thing for sure, we’ll never find out if you continue to cut pieces off her. If you keep this up then soon there won’t be enough of her, or any of the others, left to study. She could be the very key to the door that we’ve been looking to open… an answer to everything. An honest to God hope for a cure. We could save these children, and I have a gut-feeling that Rose will be able to help.”

“She might be the key to something, but it won’t be a cure. It might, however, be a way to end this craziness all once and for all. Unless we dig deeper inside of her and the others like her, we will never know for sure. Will we? And we don’t even know what this one can do yet. She hasn’t shown any hint that she can do anything like the others.”

“She’s only been here for four days,” says Dr. Valentine. “And for the majority of that time, we’ve been monitoring the head injury.”

“She’s very dangerous. Maybe more dangerous than any of the others, we don’t know yet. You need to be more careful Dr. Valentine, or one of your ‘hope-for-a-cures’ may end up being the end of you.”

“Go to hell, Shaw. Go straight to hell and die.”

“They won’t let me in there, you know, Merna,” says Shaw, jokingly. He’s trying to bring the situation back to somewhat-normal by alleviating the rubber-band tight tension between them before it snaps.

“What? Hell let you in? I’m pretty sure you have a key, so let yourself in,” she says, wheeling the gurney through the door and down a dark, narrow corridor, made all the tighter with small file carts, stainless steel rolling tables, and other discarded surgical equipment lining the walls. As she wheels the gurney angrily down the corridor, two soldiers fall in close behind her and follow her to her destination.

“Green men,” slurs Rose, looking from one soldier to the other.

Dr. Valentine says nothing, pushing Rose to an area not far from the cold white room, where the Man-In-The-White-Coat, or, Dr. Shaw, was going to cut pieces off her. That’s how Dr. Valentine said it; ‘cut pieces off her,’ Rose feels very lucky that Dr. Valentine showed up when she did.

Chapter Two

“We Medicals have a better way than that. When we dislike a friend of ours… we dissect him.”

-The Body Snatchers

The place where Dr. Valentine is taking her is unfamiliar and appears to be uninhabited by people, but only at first.

One turn left, two turns right and then left. Rose will be sure to remember the way, so should she ever need to come this way again, for any reason, she’ll know how to get here. She’ll store the directions away in a little box, she’ll keep them safe on the inside of her head, where only she can get to them. She’ll snap the lid closed so no one can get inside.

A sign affixed to the wall to Rose’s right reads East Wing. It comes into view and then passes by just as quickly. Her eyes dart from side-to-side soaking up everything, every tiny detail; no matter how insignificant. She will keep those details inside her little box too. Her mind is a gravity-well catching everything no matter how trivial they may seem. She’ll sort out what is worth keeping, and what isn’t, later.

Another green man stands ahead, his name is Private Tummons, and he clears the way by stepping aside and hugging the wall carefully. Rose only knows that this is Private Tummons, because it says so right on the name tag, sewn to his uniform. The private slightly favors one knee over the other, an old injury perhaps considers Rose. He smells of sweat and dirt and cheap aftershave.

Private Tummons watches her like a fatted rabbit would watch a starving cat, as it crept past, knowingly, and appropriately cautious.

Rose smiles at Private Tummons, but her friendly gesture isn’t reciprocated, so the smile wilts where it grew, on her small face.

Dr. Valentine continues to push the gurney steadily down the hall. The right front wheel clicks, and it jiggles almost imperceptibly as it rolls along.

Rose imagines that there is probably something small and hard stuck to it. Rose times the bumps in her mind each time the wheel rotates, to the point where the unknown object makes the wheel click on the linoleum floor. Her timing is precise: click… (Two seconds) click… (Four seconds) click…. (Six seconds).

There are doors on either side of the corridor; fifteen on the right side, and twelve doors and one elevator on the left side. Some of the rooms have doors which are standing wide open. The rooms with the open doors are unoccupied and dark inside. Twelve of them, six on the right side and six on the left, are secured with weighty padlocks.

There are other green men here too, and they react precisely in the same way, to Rose as Private Tummons had. They hug the corridor walls close and tight, all except for the ones who are armed and the one who has a big dog standing beside him.

The pace of the clicking wheel is slowing. Dr. Valentine is coming to a room that is labeled, Row – Zero – Five – East, and below that the name “ROSE’ is written in all capital letters. Rose decides that her name is nothing more than a reflection of where her room is, in this place: R-05-E (ROSE). An interesting coincidence and nothing more.

The green man with the dog fumbles with a large ring of keys. The dog is brown and large. Its tongue hangs from his mouth and occasionally drips with saliva. The green man is searching for the correct key, on a ring of too many. Most of them don’t go to anything, anymore. He unlocks the padlock and opens the door. It opens without a sound, even though, by the look of them, the hinges haven’t been oiled in a long, long time “Welcome home, princess,” he says, but not warmly.

Rose can tell he has no affection toward her, in fact, besides Dr. Valentine, there is an undercurrent of loathing. The green men hate her. She can feel it. You don’t have to be a genius to know when someone doesn’t like you. It’s something you can sense.

Nothing… not the smallest of details escapes her. Her brain churns at such a blinding speed it causes her to feel lightheaded. Rose scrutinizes everything, turning over every pebble in her mind, and looking underneath, searching for a clue that might tell her where she is, and how she came to be here.

She drinks in all she can and tries to assemble it all into some tangible structure, before stuffing it away in the little box.

Before she can be wheeled inside, she notes that the doors to either side of her own are padlocked.

All the doors are similar in the way that they have small rectangular holes, reinforced with steel grating. The holes can be closed, only from the outside, by sliding a rusty metal plate across the top. Someone has written: ‘IVY’ on the plaque next to one door, just below the location numbers, Row – Zero – Six – E, in heavy black marker ink, and all in capital letters, just like her own. Small, pale, fingers are probing blindly between the tiled floor and the bottom of the door. A green man kicks at them, heartlessly, and hisses loudly through his teeth. The fingers withdraw, disappearing quickly back inside.

Next, to the other door, the word on the plaque is: ‘HAWTHORNE’ it is written in the same type of heavy black ink. The other rooms, the ones that are locked, all have names too, and through the little rectangles, light shines through at varying levels of intensity. Rose wonders who is inside each of the rooms. She doesn’t have time to read all the names on the plaques before being rolled into her own.

The green men are on edge, but steely nerves stay their fingers from the triggers of their rifles, which are pointed directly at her head. The big brown dog growls. Rose can’t stop her body from shaking, whether it is from fear or from the effects of Dr. Shaw’s drugs fading away, she is uncertain.

Dr. Valentine says, “Rose, I’m going to loosen the restraints. You are not to move until we leave the room, and you hear the lock on the door click shut. Do you understand? It is very, very important that you don’t move, okay?” Dr. Valentine nods her head up and down, to elicit a return demonstration.

Rose nods her head. “Yes, Dr. Valentine.” The little girl makes it clear that she understands perfectly. She won’t do anything to make the green men hurt her.

There is a funny smell filling the small room. In time she’ll come to recognize the bitter odor as the scent of fear; harshly acidic with a metallic taste which dances on the back of her tongue. Rose does not move until Dr. Valentine and the green men back out of the cramped space, and she hears the click of the padlock being snapped shut.

Her room is small. A single window is boarded over from the outside, with a large piece of scavenged plywood sheeting, painted with flat black paint, peeling away from the splintered and cracking surface of the wood. The glass was, long ago, removed from the window, so only the wooden frame remains behind.

Closely set bars, bolted over the space, keep things out, and also, to keep things in. The cramped space is otherwise empty except for the gurney on which she sits.

A teardrop-shaped light bulb, with a thick, spiral filament, hangs from the ceiling by a simple hook, coated in multiple layers of old, dried, paint; a metal cage surrounds it to protect it from damage, and from small hands.

A chalkboard, caked with dust, is screwed to the wall at all four corners. There are some words on it, an agenda of sorts; the words read: Monday: Library, Tuesday: Assessment, Wednesday: Social Observation, Thursday:  Lab W—, but that’s where the rest of the words transition into a white smudge and are lost to her. The rest of the schedule is a mystery for now. She wonders if it has anything to do with her. She surmises that surely it must somehow have something to do with her.

Softly, she sighs. The light bulb flickers and the spiral filament inside slowly dims into nonexistence. In the moments that follow, all the lights in the corridor fade as well. Her eyes are not accustomed to the darkness.

A distant memory percolates to the surface her aching brain, like the slowly rising water from a frozen well. Maybe her amnesia is getting better.

She recalls, vaguely, that when she was little, she used to be afraid of the monster that lived under the bed. And sometimes there would be a different monster hiding in her closet, too. If the door were left ajar, it would peer out from the crack, between the door and the jamb.

And this one time, there was a monster that sat, hunched in the corner, staring at her from the darkness, but then a woman would come in. Rose can’t remember her face, or who she was, but when she would come, the monsters would flee in a big hurry, all except for the beast hunched in the corner, who would suddenly transfigure itself back into a pile of unfolded clothing. But, it’s a distant memory, long gone and fading, as if maybe it never actually happened at all. Who was that woman? Perhaps she was a hero like Dr. Valentine. Perhaps someday she will grow up to be a hero, and chase monsters away, just like the woman she can barely remember, and just like Dr. Valentine.

A small sound creeps through the walls, from a place unseen. It’s coming from one of the rooms next to her own. She’s certain it’s the one occupied by, HAWTHORNE. She remembers from seeing the name on the plaque in the hall before.

She listens close. Her head tilts so that her small ear presses against the wall. She can’t hear it this way, so she switches to the other ear. She grimaces. Her ear meets the cold wall; cold and hard like everything else here.

Whistling, yes, someone is whistling. It’s so faint she can barely make out the tune. It’s a simple tune. She doesn’t know it, and soon it fades away altogether, disappearing into the darkness.

She lays on the gurney. Shifting to get comfortable. Her back and neck are stiff and aching. No way that she turns can she make herself find a decent spot to lay, but she settles for laying on her back.

And there, upon the ceiling, tiny stars glow a brilliant blue-white. Dozens of them. She wonders who might have taken the time to paint them there, and why, but she’s happy someone took the time to do it, because it makes her feel like she’s not locked inside a little room at all.

Instead, it’s as if she were sleeping outside, under the wide-open sky, with a light breeze blowing across her skin. She tries to find solace, pretending she’s laying in a sprawling green field, under little twinkling stars far overhead, she drifts into a fitful sleep and awaits the oncoming nightmare that tomorrow will bring.

Chapter Three

“What you see in me is what you don’t see… And what you don’t see is what I am.”

-Unknown

A small gasp escapes Rose’s throat. She’s startled from her restless slumber. Her head is sluggish and aching from a massive sedative dose hangover.

This morning there’s continuous barking in the corridor. She isn’t sure where she is. She emerges into a void; a bubble. Panic rises in her small body. She’s disoriented. But the events of yesterday quickly come back to her.

Sitting on the edge of the gurney, she does her best to collect the thoughts, which flit around like asylum patients at medication time. They’re scattered everywhere; an unfinished jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces missing.

Broken memories crawl back into her mind and settle like a blanket of wet ash. Her eyes remain sore, but not as painful as they’d been the night before.

Moving her hand to her forehead, she grimaces, gingerly pulling at the tape that secures the gauze dressing to her skin. It’s reluctant to peel away. She pulls insistently at the edges to loosen the gummy adhesive. The tape makes a gentle tearing sound as it separates from her epidermis like an old scab, glued to her skin.

Dried blood paints the inside of the gauze. A mad-minded psychiatrist had placed a Rorschach inkblot there for her to decipher. The patch of dried blood bears a resemblance to a twisted tree, rootless, and leaning too far over as if it means to fall to the ground.

The light bulb, hanging on the hook, is lit again. It hasn’t been turned on from the inside of the room. There’s a flat piece of metal bolted snuggly over the place where the switch should be. The light must be controlled from somewhere outside.

The dog continues to bark and whimper, the one that woke her this morning, and someone outside on the other side of her door says, “Shaddup Rex!”

After that, it’s quiet again for a long time, but Rose finally hears the noise again, she listens carefully. It becomes increasingly louder, she imagines it must be the sound of doors opening; doors to the other locked rooms, one at a time, one right after another. She listens carefully as each door is unlocked. Some have squeaky hinges, some do not.

Each time a door is opened, a green man calls out a specific room location, such as, “Wayfinder, R – Zero – One – E, Lily” now, Rose knows, R – Zero – One – E, is the Wayfinder assigned to someone named, Lily. She learns that R – Zero – Two – E is Aster’s Wayfinder, and, R – Zero – Three – E, is Cane’s.

Rose is most interested in discovering who resides in the two rooms that bookend her own and put a face to the names. She waits silently until she hears the soldier call, “Wayfinder, R – Zero – Four – E, sibling: Hawthorne.”

The next ‘Wayfinder’ to be called out is hers, and she listens as her name is called. Her door is unlocked and opened. She hopes the brown dog will be there again. She envisions, for a moment, how nice it would be if she and the dog could be friends, but it’s not the brown dog this time.

The dog in the corridor this morning is black with a white muzzle, and its front left paw has some silvery tufts of fur on each of its toes. The dog backs away from her, slowly, nervously. Lowering its head, but never taking his eyes off her, it half-growls, half-whimpers, forcing a high-pitched whining sound through its nose. She decides she doesn’t like this dog as much as she did the brown dog from last night.

Rose is taken from her room under heavy guard. The weapons pointing at her head are so close to her she can smell the brassy, gun oil the green men use to keep their rifles in tip-top operating condition.

When she emerges into the hall, there’s already a line of children, the exact number she had counted inside her head. It’s made up of boys and girls. Some older than her, some younger.

The children are collected and put into their group, or, what the soldiers refer to as a ‘section,’ every morning. You must do everything with your ‘section’ while you’re not locked in your room, or bad things might happen to you.

She’s moved to the line and tied to the others in the ‘section’. Her hands are cuffed, awkwardly, behind her back, like the other children, in various restraints; cuffs, ropes, wire, or whatever could be scrounged up from around the base.

Rose doesn’t like having her hands behind her back, it makes her shoulders ache, and after a while, her hands start to tingle, just like before, when Dr. Shaw had her secured to the gurney.

Each of the children has their feet shackled together, making it almost impossible to walk. They’re forced to adopt a shuffling gait, making them look less like children, and more like deranged primates. Metal rings fitted around their ankles rub the skin raw so that they are scabbed over and bleeding.

Rose, for the time being, is secured to the front of the line, all the while she is face-to-face with the business end of an M1 carbine.

She manages to smile at the green men. They do not smile back. They only return an icy stare. They glance to one another, shaking their heads. Rose doesn’t like the way they treat her and the other children. She wants, more than anything, for people to like her… someone to love her. She feels so lonely and sad in this strange place.

One of the green men rolls his eyes and groans. They don’t like her, or any of the other children here, and they make it very clear by the handing out the roughest treatment possible, during the morning line-up. She wonders if they even like themselves. Probably not.

She’s shoved towards the next door in line, so the child kept there can be retrieved, and fixed into the section. Rose’s teeth rattle, and her breath is forced from her lungs, as the butt of a rifle impacts, soundly, on her scapula. It’s followed by the barrel digging painfully between her cervical vertebrae, to emphasize the green man’s intent for her to get moving. She guides the section forward.

She can feel resistance in the section as they go. She figures its Hawthorne who’s pulling, ever-so-slightly, backward, as she’s trying to move the section forward.

She turns to look back to him, and she’s met by the boy’s face; his affect is flat, but even so, she can sense the turmoil and sinister nature of the boy worming beneath his skin. She can observe no more because suddenly her head is turned back, to face forward, by the tip of the green man’s rifle barrel.

The green man who carries a heavy ring of keys calls out, “R – Zero – Six – E, sibling, Ivy.” He steps aside as Ivy cautiously leaves the safety of her room.

More of an abused animal than a child, Ivy steps into the hall, moving no faster than cold pancake syrup flowing up a steep hillside.

A green man becomes impatient, and shoves her, causing her to stumble. Rose reaches out, to keep her from falling, and receives a rifle butt in the ribs for her effort.

This girl is the one who let her little fingers roam under the door last night. The green man said ‘sibling’, once before, referring to Hawthorne, and now again with Ivy.

Her features are much the same as Hawthorne’s. It’s enough for Rose to see them as brother and sister; twins to be more accurate. Greasy, coal-black hair, thin, crooked noses, and ivory skin veiled in a sickly pallor. A brother and sister, here together in this awful place. She finds herself envious of them, for having each other, when she has no one.

Ivy raises her eyes from the floor just long enough to get a quick look at Rose and lowers them back down. When Ivy is added to the section Rose is no longer the leader, so a green man digs the rifle barrel into Ivy’s back, instead, to guide her along. Rose breaths more comfortably now that the rifle is no longer boring into her, but nevertheless, she feels no safer.

The same process of gathering children into a section is being repeated on the other side of the corridor, and another group of six children is secured into a section of their own.

A small, frail, blonde girl is the last to be brought from a cell. Rose watches closely as a soldier kneels to place something cylindrical around one of the girl’s hands, completely encasing it. The cylinder is padded on the inside and rusted on the outside because it’s made from some sort of inferior metal, hastily riveted together. A green man locks the cylinder into place, tightly, around one wrist. It must be very tight, and painful when worn because the little girl frowns in discomfort as the lock is fastened.

When the green man goes to place the second cylinder on the girl’s other hand something awful and unexpected happens. He accidentally brushes against her palm. That slight caress gives him immediate pause. He rises from where he had knelt, stiff as a board, his foaming mouth and agape as if he is trying to scream. Nothing comes out, not a sound. He’s in too much agony to scream.

His eyes are as large as dinner plates. He’s sweating heavily, skin growing pale, and struggling for breath. He’s going into shock. Tears stream from his eyes. His rapid pulse can be timed by each beats of his bulging temples. The carotid artery in his neck swells with each strained and dysrhythmic beat of his heart.

The black dog barks, jerking firmly at its leash, twisting and turning to escape its handler’s hold. Steadily it backs away from the unusual commotion.

Rose’s section jostles from side to side. The children shift, and waddle, in line to see what’s happening. Nervously they anticipate the hell-storm that’s sure to descend upon them.

Green men loft their weapons, and they mean to use them, too, until something dies from lead poisoning. They each draw a bead on the blonde girl’s skull. Tension heightens.

The bitter scent of fear fills the air. Collectively the green men move their fingers from the safe position, which rests beside the trigger guard and place them on the crescent moon-shaped triggers. Each man stands eager and ready to apply enough pressure to the trigger to pop the little girl’s head open, like a pumpkin. Green men shout for the blonde girl to lay flat on the floor.

What happened was an accident, not an attack. Anyone who cared enough to see the truth could have seen it. One hand is safely entrapped in a heavy metal mitten, and the girl leaves it to dangle at her side. She raises her free hand into the air, palm outward, showing her unconditional surrender and willingness to comply with the command she’s been given. She’ll do exactly as she’s been told. She offers no challenge. She knows the consequence of doing anything less is deadly.

Rose notices small silvery hairs covering the girl’s palm. Wisps of hairs, only visible because the light has illuminated them at just the right angle. On the tips of each of the fine hairs hangs a tiny drop of milky-yellow fluid. Apparently, the girl can deliver an unbearably excruciating sting with only the smallest of touches.

The injured man writhes on the floor in a fetal position, gasping for air, his arm is swelling more with each passing second. It’s grown at least twice the size of the other. He cradles it to his chest. Instinct demands he protect it from further harm. It’s turning an unusual mottled-blue color too. The pain, driving him to the brink of madness. A potent toxin injected through his epidermis, into the dermis below, has found its way into the man’s bloodstream, and rockets through his body. His face, eyes, and tongue are beginning to swell severely. He vomits on the floor.

The blonde girl is lying face down on the floor, and she doesn’t dare to move, so much as a hair out of place. The green men would have shot the blonde girl right then and there, sending her brains flying out in all directions, like grey confetti, had it not been for Dr. Shaw running in, hands waving wildly, shouting at the green men.

“Don’t shoot! She’s important to the research! Stand down!” says Dr. Shaw, who wastes no time telling two of the green men to take the injured one to the infirmary, right away.

Rose searches for the little girl’s name plaque; it says NETTLE.

Rose’s section is forced to walk or shuffle, rather, to another floor. They turn right three times, and then once to the left. The way leads them to a room full of books. Rose believes that this day must be Monday because this is the Library Day mentioned on the chalkboard hanging in her room. Now she knows the day of the week, and she feels better knowing what day it is. Just that tiny bit of knowledge helps to allay her fear in some small fashion.

The other children, in Nettle’s section, are not here. Only the children housed on Rose’s side of the corridor are with her in the library. The others must have a different schedule of activities, she figures.

One by one, each boy and girl is freed from their handcuffs, then their ankles are released, and each, in turn, is backed up against one of the library walls. Two green men enter a cage, large enough so they will be safe from anyone reaching in to get at them.

Rose watches and waits. Feeling that the other children must already know what’s to happen next, she’ll follow their lead, and sure enough, when the green men climb into the cage and lock the door behind them, the children go to their favorite shelf, to collect a book to read. She does the same, proceeding to the bookshelves while making sure to keep a wary eye on the green men in the cage.

There are many old books here, standing full of information that the world is too far gone to need anymore. Some of them are covered in dust. Very few are in decent condition. They all have a particular smell that only old-books can have, after a long time. Rose observes the other children as they retreat to a row of wooden tables to read what they’ve chosen.

When she delays one of the green men points his rifle at her and shouts “Read! Now!” She does as she’s told and chooses a book: A History of Man, from Prehistory to Present Day. The author’s name is rubbed from the binding from overuse.

The others are quietly reading, except for Hawthorne and his sister, Ivy, who seem far more interested in the large mirror on the library room wall. Rose glances at it too. It’s a curious thing. Who would hang a mirror that large on a wall and why? Dark, blurry shapes crisscross each other, swimming across the reflective surface like ghosts. There’s someone behind the glass, watching them while they read. Why would anyone do that? Rose wonders what it is they want to know about them, and why they want to know it, and why, whoever it is behind the mirror just doesn’t come into the room and watch for themselves, instead of sneaking around like rats. Hawthorne and Ivy occasionally lock eyes on each other, before going on to concentrate on the mirror again.

Rose is startled when one of the green man rap on the bars and the resulting clang sends everyone, who wasn’t before, back to reading their selections. She watches the two siblings from the corner of her eye. They turn their heads to each other again, and something is being relayed between them, though they never say one word out loud to each other. Spoken words aren’t needed for the brother and sister pair. They communicate without them, without signals, or objects, or code. They speak to each other, directly, with their thoughts.

Rose can feel the dull warmth of jealousy rising within her. How they do it? She wishes she could do it too. Hawthorne begins to whistle his tune; the one Rose heard from inside her room last night. He blows it so softly that even she can barely hear it.

As if he could possibly hear the tune from so far away, one of the green men in the cage starts to whistle too, mirroring Hawthorne almost note for note. Hawthorne and Ivy giggle softly to each other. The boy tilts his head, nodding to his sister. He’s proud of himself that much is clear. They raise their eyes to see Rose staring at them, and simultaneously they lower their heads to hide their eyes from her.

The day was long. Rose was able to read much of her book, A History of Man, from Prehistory to Present Day, before the green men made her return it to its spot, on the library shelf. Most of the text and information about Mankind is new to her, she leaves the library feeling… informed, disgusted, and sad for Mankind. She’s mentally drained. Was it the reading that removed her strength? Is it being treated as if she were some cunning, wild animal on the prowl, and thinking endlessly of feeding on fresh meat? This is not the way that she feels of course. But it’s the way the green men and Dr. Shaw think of her.

They misunderstand her… it’s okay because they don’t know who she is, but does she know who she is? She only feels confused and curious for now, but the soldiers treat her as if she is a dangerous monster. She just wants to be loved and safe and wanted. She wants to be a normal child. But then, what is normal?

The children are taken back to East Wing, and in reverse order of the morning’s lineup, they are put back into their rooms, secured behind the heavy padlocked doors, safe and sound.

Rose sits on her gurney rubbing a small label on her arm. It’s a marking that she hadn’t noticed before. It’s a tattoo of her Wayfinder number; R – Zero – Five – E.

The light above her head flickers and dims. She kicks her slippers from her feet. They land with clunking sounds to the floor. The little, painted stars glow soothingly overhead. Again, she is reminded of the monster under the bed, the heat of fear rising in her stomach as it prepares to pounce on her, and the glaring red eyes of the clothing-monster, stalking her from the corner of her distant memories. But, Rose wonders, what does one do when you are the monster?

Chapter Four

“It was night, and the rain fell and falling, it was rain, but having fallen, it was blood.”

-Edgar Allen Poe

On Tuesday, Rose wakes to the sound of scuffling in the corridor outside her room.

A green man calls out “Wayfinder, R – Zero – Four – E, sibling, Hawthorne.”

Her Wayfinder will be called next. Hopping up from her bed, her feet hit the cold, tiled floor. She doesn’t much care for the feeling of it, and she draws her small toes skyward, to lessen the amount of skin meeting it. She finds her slippers, exactly where she kicked them off, dirty hospital slippers (one size too large for her). She slips them on, taking some indistinct comfort inside the tattered fabric shoes.

There’s a predictable rhythm to the morning routine; a marching beat that can be measured and timed. When Rose’s door is opened, she walks through the doorway and into the hall, nice and neat, as not to make anyone, ‘get crazy on a trigger’, as some of the green men say from time to time, mostly to Hawthorne, because he’s real trouble.

Rose believes the boy is always pushing, not too hard, mind you, just a little, but still pushing. He’s always testing the green men’s patience.

Ivy often encourages him, just to see how far he can push the them. She seems to like it when chaos is the order of the day. She the type who thrives on it, which doesn’t help anything much at all.

Hawthorne whistles the same tune… always the same song, always in the same key, always at the same tempo, so that it drives Rose so crazy that she wants to scream, but she doesn’t.

The troubling, but airy, melody floats in and out, like the sound of a wind chime tussled by a warm summer wind. She wonders if it’s the only one he’s ever known. She wishes he would learn another one.

The repetitiveness of it grates her soul and makes her brain feel all itchy, like ants crawling in her head looking for cake crumbs. She sometimes finds herself scrubbing her scalp with her fingernails, trying to lessen the itch, but it doesn’t help.

Today her section is led to the room labeled, Research 06. The way is right, left, left, and then through a door that leads one floor down, and all the way down a long corridor to the last room on the right. This room is easy to remember because there is a big poster tacked to the wall. On it is an ancient looking, white-haired man. He wears a red, white, and blue suit, and the words around him read: I WANT YOU FOR U.S. ARMY. Rose gives him no consideration. It’s not her concern. She doesn’t care about what he wants from her right now. People in Hell want ice water. She has wants and needs too. She doesn’t want to be a prisoner in this place. She needs to be with a family that loves her and cares for her.

Her section is carefully released from the restraints. There will be no book reading today, no quiet time, no threats from green men cowering in cages. The children are steered, at gunpoint, to little school desks, with the chair built in. They’re set indiscriminately throughout, Research 06, which is at least, three times larger than the library.

The others take a seat without being prompted as if their places were predetermined. Rose, however, requires a nudge from a rifle barrel to her scapula. She staggers slowly to a desk. Soon they are all joined by three adults, Dr. Valentine, Dr. Shaw, and another woman, Rose has only seen one time before, but the woman has never spoken to her.

Each of the three adults carries cardboard boxes with faux woodgrain paper on the outside. The boxes are stuffed to the brim with papers and file folders that stick out haphazardly from the tops. There are two children per adult. Rose can’t help herself. She gasps as the Man-In-The-White-Coat sits across from her and Ivy.

“Hello again, R – Zero – Five – E, and, R – Zero – Six – E, shall we get started?” His voice is flat.

He’s as unfriendly as Rose remembers him to be. If the Man-In-The-White-Coat is silently pleased with her unsettled reaction to him sitting across from her, he doesn’t show it outwardly.

Ivy is not impressed and displays her boredom by sneering. Her eyes cut right through the Man-In-The-White-Coat.

He carefully chooses several pieces of paper from inside the box that he brought with him, he then places the box onto the floor, nudging it under the small table with his toe, so that is bumps against Rose’s feet.

Rose pays no attention to his greeting, or the way he intentionally pushed the box against her, or his question, even though she heard it plainly, and replays on a continuous loop in her mind. She must focus to make it stop repeating.

This man is too full of questions for her liking. She can’t help but look at his face, and the unwelcoming beauty of it. Smooth and perfect, but his smile is dangerous.

Some might think Dr. Shaw is a nice-looking man. Some might even say he’s handsome in many ways, but it’s only on the outside though, because on the inside, he is a horrid thing, with jagged-razor teeth, and sharp spikes, and poisonous venom, waiting to eat the children at Camp Able, all up.

She’s distracted by the presence of Dr. Valentine when the woman passes behind her and Ivy. Dr. Valentine’s going to the next desk over. Hawthorne and Cane are there, waiting for Dr. Valentine to arrive.

Dr. Valentine’s sweet smell floats through the room, settling deeply in Rose’s nares. The scent of peaches intoxicates her. Dr. Valentine smiles and nods to her, comfortingly, before starting her work with the two boys, but it doesn’t do anything to ease her unease. The question is repeated once more, this time much louder.

“Shall we get started, R – Zero – Five – E? R – Zero – Six – E?” repeats the Man-In-The-White-Coat.

Ivy says nothing and continues to sneer. Rose turns to him, looks deep into his eyes and says, “My name is Rose, Dr. Shaw. I’m not a thing, I’m a person.”

Dr. Shaw freezes, before returning to the stack of pages he was arranging in order a moment before. He takes a pencil from his pocket and jots a note on a notepad. The pad is already so crammed with writing that it must be written vertically in the left-hand margin of the page.

Rose lifts her head and leans forward a little to see what’s he’s writing, but she can’t see it.

He says nothing and continues to rearrange the pages before saying, “You are – a research subject and are assigned a number. You do not have a name, a real one at any rate. And you most certainly are not a person.”

Rose is confused by this information. The back of her neck heats with anger and embarrassment. She fights an overwhelming feeling of wanting to cry, but her eyes tear up against her will, anyhow.

She slides down in the little desk not knowing how to react to what was said to her. She can hear Ivy snickering, but she chooses to ignore it. The other children are pointing at pages with photos and diagrams on them. Some are talking to Dr. Valentine and to the other woman, about what they see and questions they are being asked. Some are demonstrating little tricks they can do, but only under the strictest supervision, and under the watchful eyes of green men patrolling in the back of the room.

During all of this, Ivy says very little, giving only one-word answers, if bothering to answer at all when Dr. Shaw asks questions and holds up page after page.

Hawthorne sulks just like his sister. He refuses to answer any of the questions that Dr. Valentine poses. Cane is more than eager to show off how smart he thinks he is.

Someone’s whistling what Rose has come to know as Hawthorne’s tune, but it’s not the boy this time, it’s the same green man, the one from before, the one in the library cage. Curious.

Dr. Shaw snaps his fingers, redirecting her focus. “What is it you think you are, exactly?” he asks Rose, clearing his throat he waits.

“I’m a girl. Anyone with a brain can see that.”

“Okay,” he says, mocking her. He writes on his notepad. The yellow papers make crisp crinkling sounds beneath the weight of the lead pencil tip scrawling across the paper.

“How was the book?” says Shaw.

She’s about to ask which book, but she puts two and two together quickly enough. Dr. Shaw was watching her when she selected A History of Man, from Prehistory to Present Day, from the library shelf. “It was disappointing.”

“You think it was disappointing? Tell me why.”

“All that men can do… but instead of doing good things, they mostly do bad things. Horrible things, and usually it’s to each other.”

He notates her answer and shows her the first of many pictures. “What do you see here, R – Zero – Five – E?” He taps the photo with the end of his pen.

“A puppy,” she tells him. The picture cause her to smile, but she intentionally forces that emotion from her face.

He writes. The next photo is a solid blue octagon. “How many sides?”

“Eight,” says, Rose, tilting her head, feeling proud at her own intellect.

He flips a page of his notepad, looking for an empty place to make a notation of her response. He finds a little spot and writes it down.

He’s about to go to the next item in the stack when she asks him if he wants her to tell him the color of the octagon too.

“Colors are easy you know, but I’d love to know anyway, if you’d like to tell me.” But he seems more interested in making further notes, rather than wanting to hear about the color of the shape.

She’s curious about how much he knows of her, and how much more he wants to know. She wonders if his observations of her has taught him that everything she sees and hears is classified, and categorized, and remembered. But, no, that’s the whole point of all this, isn’t it? To learn about her and the others.

“It’s blue,” mumbles Rose, already growing tired of this exercise. As she expected, his response to her answer is anticlimactic. Her nose wrinkles. He’s right, colors are easy. Even kids younger than her know their colors.

The little things Dr. Shaw does continuously remind her of exactly why she doesn’t like him. Plus, it makes her feel uncomfortable knowing he watches everything she and the rest of the children do.

The next photograph is of a vehicle. Shaw passes it in front of Ivy first. Ivy turns her head away from it, as if someone had ran a rotten fish under her nose, and chooses to stare at a wall, instead of giving him what he wants.

“Okay, Ivy. Thank you for nothing. How about you then, Rose?”

It’s a black and white photo, developed on thick white paper. Even though the vehicle on the paper is painted in shades of black and white and grey, Rose can push the colorless surface away and see the real colors of the image underneath. The vehicle is drab green.

She stares at the photo, tilting her head to the side, concentrating on it because the image is beginning to vibrate and lift from the page. The vehicle becomes a floating rotating, three-dimensional model, on which the doors and hood open and close.

She sucks in a breath and looks around to see if Ivy, or Dr. Shaw or anyone else can see it. She turns back to the sound of Dr. Shaw tapping the photo to regain her attention to it.

Words and symbols come into view and hover over the face of the photo as if they are floating on the surface of an ocean. This is a new experience for Rose. Nothing like this has ever happened to her before, at least she can’t remember if it has.

The sensation of the photo coming to life is dizzying. She feels as if she is falling backward in her chair. She lurches forward to correct the feeling of tumbling over. Motion sickness triggers sour bile to rise in her throat. She forces it back down into the pit of her rolling stomach. Her head is spinning like a toy top. She can read and understand the meaning of the words written in English, but they jockey for position with strange symbols before her eyes. The unrecognizable symbols swaying on an invisible pendulum are unfamiliar to her.

She thinks she should know the strange language, if language is, in fact, what she sees here. She can’t decipher any of it. She recites what she thinks Dr. Shaw wants to know about the photo.

“U.S. Army Jeep, manufactured by Dodge Brothers Corporation, three-quarter ton, four-wheel drive, olive drab green.”

She waits for him to write it down. He doesn’t. She swallows a gulp of air into her lungs, so hard she can feel her ribs aching. She settles back into her chair and waits for another image.

“What just happened to you, and how do you know so much about the vehicle in this picture?”

She’s uncomfortable. She can feel Cane, and Hawthorne, and Lily, and Aster’s eyes glued to her, drilling into her. Even Ivy, who has stopped sneering, and staring at the wall, and has turned her interest to her. She’s hoping the answer to Dr. Shaw’s question will lift off another picture somewhere to help her explain herself, but it doesn’t. She has no idea how she knows so much about the jeep and decides the best thing to do is say nothing at all.

“How do you know the color of the jeep is olive drab green when the photo is black and white?” said Shaw, inspecting at the photo himself.

“Isn’t everything here painted green?” Rose says.

Shaw nods his head slowly and writes. “Very impressive skill you have there, you know?” I would be very interested in knowing just what all else you have floating in your pretty little head.” He turns to Ivy who is still studying Rose. “Can you do that, R – Zero – Six – E? Can you look at a picture and know everything about the thing on it?”

Ivy returns her gaze to the wall.

He turns back to Rose. “What else can you tell me, R – Zero – Five – E?”

More information than she cares to know is bubbling to the surface of her brain. It tickles like goose down brushing the grey matter. Collected bits and pieces of trivial information have taken form and flashes before her eyes.

Overheard snippets of conversations, barked orders, a cacophony of discussion in the corridors at night, and the posted map to escape the building in the event of a fire, have Rose with useful information that she can’t keep from spilling out of her mouth. “Camp Able, Brownsville, Texas, 7th Field Hospital.”

Shaw drops his pencil. His mouth opens, he consciously makes himself close it, so it’s not hanging open. He peers into her eyes. “Please, continue.”

“Original troop capacity of 2,237 officers, 19,247 enlisted men and women. There are less than seventy-five soldiers still here, and there are twelve children who you keep here to study. I bet there were more once. I bet you did something awful to them. I bet you cut pieces off from them until there wasn’t anything left to cut on. Didn’t you?”

Dr. Valentine is right, you are different, and soon…” he taps her on her forehead, smartly, with the end of his pen, “we will see just how different you are, Rose.”

Rose leans back to take a much-deserved rest in her little desk. The falling sensation has subsided. She smiles because for the first time Dr. Shaw calls her by her name. “Let me show you one more photograph, Rose. What do you make of this one?”

The photograph he’s showing her means nothing to her. It’s of a vast machine hovering in the black of night. A spewing jet of fire is escaping out from below the hulking thing. It’s lit by enormous beams of light coming up from the ground, but still, only a small portion of the machine’s silhouette is visible.

Though she’s never seen anything like it, the design of the thing feels familiar to her. There are no ‘English’ words written on the photo, only the strange symbols that only she can see because they aren’t really there, they just, sort of appear. She tries to hide any emotion on her face which would give her away. She feels a vague connection to the thing in the photograph. She shakes her head, no, and shrugs her shoulders. It must have worked because Dr. Shaw places the photo along with the others back into the box. She’ll file the symbols from the photo away in her little box.

“That’s enough for now. R – Zero – Five – E and R – Zero – Six – E, go to Dr. Valentine’s table,” says Shaw.

She does as he instructs her and moves to the next table to be assessed by Dr. Valentine. Rose decides that she likes Tuesdays most of all because she gets to spend time with Dr. Valentine.

When she’s released back into her room the day is mostly over. She can sense the darkness behind the exterior walls of East Wing, and the humidity rising behind her blocked-up window. The light bulb is still lit. Her slippers, she kicks them into the corner, and she remains on the gurney. It squeaks beneath her body, though she weighs hardly anything. She can feel the coiled springs through the thin, musty mattress pad.

The light flickers overhead and dies out, and the stars on the ceiling glow happily. Rose feels her insides rumble hungrily… wantonly. She’s craving something, but she doesn’t know what that something is. Nevertheless, life-giving energy wells up within her, all the way from the tips of her toes to the very ends of her hair. It courses through her like currents of unbridled, raw electricity. Like the spark of life itself running up and down the length of her spine and dancing in her stomach.

She slides from the gurney. Her feet hit the cold tile with a clammy splat. Something is happening, something important. She feels the rumble of it inside of her before the rumbling manifests itself into an actual glorious sound. The smell seeps in from around the edges of the boards fitted securely across the window. A scent even better than Dr. Valentine’s peach fragrance.

Rain.

Rose can’t hear it splashing against the barricaded window boards. She listens to the thunder. She’s dizzy; not dizzy like when Dr. Shaw slipped her the medicine before, but happy dizzy, thirsty dizzy, confusion swims in her brain. She feels dehydrated, her mouth and tongue are dry and sticky. She can’t cry no matter how much she wants to.

She sways drunkenly, almost falling. She’s entirely and appropriately intoxicated by the falling rain. She grabs the bars on the window casing, so she doesn’t fall to the floor in a boneless pile of flesh, overcome by the smell of it. She places her forehead against them so forcefully that they make blunt, elongated imprints into her into it.

She reaches through the spaces between them to touch the plywood sheeting. And there, on the very end of her slender fingers, she can feel the raindrops bounce against the other side of the board. The feeling of it works its way into the tips of her fingers, working its way up her arms, and it doesn’t stop until it reaches her pounding heart. She feels rejuvenated and hopeful for her future.

She stands, swaying, from side-to-side until early morning. Her legs cramp terribly after the first few hours, but thankfully she’s lost the feeling in them. They’re all numb and tingling.

She experiences the storm raging through the vibrations in the wood window-covering, the smell of rain in the air and the sound of quaking thunder shakes her to her roots.

Rose never stops smiling, and she sings a happy song under her breath, so the green men can’t hear, about a rainy day. She must have learned the song, a long time ago, when she was very little; about sweet raindrops falling on her window sill.

Tomorrow she could be a monster again, to satisfy the green men’s need for something to hate. For now, she’s satisfied just being a happy little girl, loving the rain, even if the drops would soon turn to blood.

Chapter Five

“Some ghosts are so quiet, you would hardly know they were there.”

-Bernie McGill

Dr. Merna Valentine is sick. Plain and simple. Sick and tired of the whole, god damned, situation. Literally… nauseous to her stomach; ulcers boring into her gastric lining. Her nerves are transformed into little white-hot pokers looking for a route to burn their way out of her body.

She’s had way too much of the thick, instant, sludge they call coffee around here, at scenic Camp Abel. Thanks to the Turned she can’t go to a local diner for a cup of the good stuff; the slow-brewed stuff, dripping golden-brown, drop by drop into the pot. The liquid black-gold flowing down a throat like a fountain of youth. The crap here slides down like a reluctant luke-warm mudslide.

The end-of-the-world presented itself in a whole different kind of package than the one she had expected. No split-second flash of light. It was supposed to come faster than the blink of an eye, quicker than a thief in the night. There was no legion of mighty angels. No flapping wings of holy hosts. No throne floating down with Christ Almighty to judge and rule, tossing demons and evil-doers into the bottomless sin-encrusted pit, smoking with brimstone, and searing sinners in the heat of everlasting torment.

Instead, it came with all the pomp and circumstance of stepping in a wet pile of cat vomit.

The fire and brimstone portion of the end-of-the-world, and the releasing of every evil thing from the depths of Hades came a short time after. The end is tangible, and the Turned are its ambassadors.

The base, while not entirely deserted, feels as if it were, especially at this late hour. Dr. Valentine’s rounds still need to be completed, but the wooziness and nausea brought on by too much-concentrated caffeine, gulped down much too quickly, causes her to consider skipping them altogether; just for the time being. But still, she needs some exercise to reduce the effects of what may be a moderate caffeine overdose, so she walks to the hospital wing. It’s 0130 hours.

All the lights are out. The generator is shut down promptly at 2100 hours every night. After that, the fuel is only used to power essential areas of the base, like the fence parameter and the guard houses. There are times that Major Connors will let his soldiers light up the rec hall, but not often, and only if it’s a good reason; to boost morale. To get people laid, and to get people drunk on homemade beer and wine. This measure helps to conserve fuel and increase productivity.

Dr. Valentine pulls a cheap chrome-plated flashlight from her lab coat pocket. She slides the flimsy narrow switch upward towards the bulb-end, and it comes on, shining dimly, but it’s better than a candle dripping wax all over her hand, or burning her hair on the flame. Tomorrow, perhaps, she can sweet talk Private Waters, the supply clerk, into giving her some fresher batteries. She may have to flirt again.

She places the flashlight upon her shoulder and holds steady by tilting her head, pinning it between her high cheekbone and her shoulder. The slight tilt of her head causes the vein-trolling, caffeine-induced dizziness to increase in intensity. She pushes through it.

She holds a clipboard in her hand as she uncaps an ink pen with her teeth. Thin lips closing around the cap, her tongue plays with the tip. Dr. Valentine likes the sensation, as the sharp tip scrapes across her taste buds. She sucks at the saliva gathering around the cap.

There’s no need to round on, R – Zero – One – E, tonight. She was taken to the operating room shortly after returning from this afternoon’s assessment session. So, she moves on to, R – Zero – Two – E, subject: Aster, and takes note of the observation which can only be made through the narrow window in the door.

Child: Aster, adolescent female age 10.

New behavior noted: Aster is in her room and standing at the window. The window is secure, boards are in place. The child doesn’t appear to be trying to escape. The child is motionless with face pressed against bars, reaching through to touch boards which are covering windows. The child’s not moving except for slight swaying from side to side. She doesn’t appear to be aware of my presence. Unusual. Aster typically notices my presence immediately. No further observation or interactions to note during rounding on child: Aster. --------------- Dr. Merna J. Valentine Ph.D.

She crosses the hall. When she peers into the room labeled, R – Zero – Seven – E, belonging to the subject named Ash, she is perplexed by her initial observation, but goes on to documents her findings.

Tuesday, May 26^th, 1950, 0142 hours.

Child: Ash, preteen male age 8.

New behavior noted: Ash, standing in his room in front of the window. The window is secure, boards in place, he does not appear to be trying to escape. He is standing motionless with his face pressed against bars and reaching through them to touch the boards covering windows. Child not moving. Does not appear to be aware of my presence as he usually does. On previous visits, he has never failed to acknowledge my presence. No further observations or interactions to note during rounding on child: Ash. --------------- Dr. Merna J. Valentine Ph.D.

Coincidentally it’s nearly the same as the entry she made for Aster, word for word.

Major Connors will think she skipped the rounds and fudged the charts, but it can’t be helped. She turns back to cross the corridor to where Cane’s room is located.

Cane is engaged in the same behavior as Aster and Ash.

Improbable. This can’t be a coincidence.

She’s slightly unnerved by the uncanny similarity.

They can’t even see each other. There’re no visual cues to lead them to mimic the behavior of the other.

Her observations are consistent with each of the children. Every child exhibits the same collective response, though no child can see another.

The thunder booms outside. Dr. Valentine, startled by the suddenness of the noise, jumps. The fear settles into her legs. She temporarily loses the feeling in them.

Sliding over to Hawthorne’s room, she observes the same behavior before crossing the hall to another occupied room, again the same reaction, and another room… the same…. The findings are consistent.

She walks eagerly to Rose’s room anticipating a similar encounter. And there it is, she notes the same activity with Rose. The girl doesn’t even attempt to engage her in polite conversation as she usually does when she makes her rounds. Rose’s way of conversing is unique. It’s not cookie-cutter like that of the other children.

Dr. Valentine calls softly to the young girl, but her voice is lost over the short distance and drowned further by the drumming of the rain on the board over the window.

Three times she calls out and each time she increases the volume of her voice, but doing so elicits no reaction.

This is not imitation, it’s something much more. More critical, yes, but what does it mean? She jumps again, shaking, startled by the storm erupting to full force outside, and draws in a sharp intake of breath. she’s always hated storms ever since she was little.

It’s the rain. They’re reacting to the storm. She remembers that it was raining on the night it happened, too.

It was cold on the night of February 24^th 1942. Rain fell from the charcoal-painted sky, landing on the tin guttering, a tinkling rivulet of cold water chimed on its way in the downspouts before spreading out on the frozen ground below.

The flowerbed outside her daughter’s window stood bare, cleared of the dead and overgrown boxwoods, which have built up there, unkempt and tangled, over years of disregard of the house’s previous inhabitants.

The beds would have to wait until spring to be planted with flowers. Any yellow flowers would do. Savannah, Merna’s daughter, loved yellow more than any other color in the world, and yellow flowers, to Savannah, smelled sweeter and looked prettier any other flower in the whole world.

There were bright flashes of light, one following the other. At first, Merna thought the flashes were lightning lighting up the hand-poured glass window panes of her home, but when she parted the heavy drapes to look out, she realized it was the beams from massive searchlights positioned around the military base on the coast.

She could hear air raid sirens building up to an eardrum-bursting level. She placed her hands over her ears, protecting them from the roaring noise growing ever louder.

A small voice called for her, floating down a long hallway from the small bedroom. She ran to her little girl who was calling for her.

Savannah shrank into the comfort of a simple bed, adorned with a brass headboard. Crayons snapped beneath Merna’s bare feet as she moved through an obstacle course of toys to reach the little girl. She lifted her into her arms. The seven-year-old seemed to weigh no more than a big goose-down pillow.

Savannah covered her eyes with the backs of her tiny hands. Merna twisted at the waist from right to left and back again, rocking her from side-to-side attempting to ease her fear.

The entire house was lit unnaturally from the pallid glow of the searchlights, which crisscrossed, digging into the sky for something… something.

The rain outside slowed from a downpour to a fine mist, and everything except for the panting of the child grew silent.

Carrying Savannah to the back door, Merna gripped the knob frosted with the cold from the wintery weather on the other side of the solid slab of Beau D’arc. It felt like a hailstone in her hand as she twisted it. It was stubborn, but it turned, and the door swung open toward her.

The bottom of the weighty door scraped against the top of her big toe taking layers of skin with it. She whined, ground her teeth together, and chewed hard at her lip to help her swallow down the pain, and then she stepped onto the back porch.

The searchlights swung in the air, doing their jobs until they all gradually zeroed in on the same point in the heavens. And as they converged onto the single spot, the horizon blew apart like a firework show on the Fourth of July.

Shells exploded overhead, some falling into the neighborhoods far below and they burst open in great fireballs of reds, and oranges, and yellows, and blues, every shade in between.

Merna ducked and covered Savannah with her arms. Hugging her delicate, bony frame to her warm body even as percussive shockwaves rippled through her so that she could feel the vibration in her lungs.

Neighbors poured from their houses like Carpenter Ants from wooden hives. Like blood from open wounds, clotting in the yards, and gardens, and streets wearing pajamas, and nightgowns of pastel colors and cotton lacing.

Women had their hair up in curlers, some had cold cream on their faces making themselves look like mimes standing there to interpret the falling destruction raining down upon them all.

And the men were pulling their robes together, some stumbling over bicycles or other toys children left absent-mindedly in the front yards, trusting they’d still be where they left them tomorrow.

Men, women, and children stood in front of their homes and looked upward and pointed in confusion to what they were witnessing.

Pointing to the sky, over the city of Los Angeles, California. Something, floated there, dangling from an invisible string.

It reminded Merna of the hanging Chinese paper lanterns that she had seen at a bad Chinese restaurant.

Shells fell all around and throughout the neighborhood, rocking the earth beneath the feet of the bewildered populace. Savannah screamed in terror, directly into her mother’s ears. They cried with tinnitus. The high-pitched ringing unrelenting.

A nearby explosion and the corresponding starburst of blinding heat ripped Merna’s eyesight away from her. She stumbled, taking herself and Savannah to the ground in a heap. She blinked away the white spots dancing before her eyes as best she could.

Looking up into the black, smoke-filled sky, she could make out a small fissure which had opened in the underside of the object.

The area below of the hanging lantern ignited in a spout of sparks and flame, brilliantly illuminating the bottom portion of it, before flickering and fading.

Only a few short days after the incident the area beneath where the lantern had hovered had begun to transform people: her neighbors, good friends that Merna had known for years, both old and young were falling ill.

Some folks, unprovoked, began attacking others in the streets, for no good reason. Murdering, looting, and committing unspeakable and ungodly acts upon each other; everything about her happy life had come to an end as she had known it.

Her home, along with many others, as well as a large part of the city, had been destroyed by falling U.S. Army ammunition. The casualties of friendly fire lay in the skeletons of gutted house frames. And the bodies, too many to collect to bury, rotted in pools of clotted ichor where they fell.

Savannah, like many others, grew desperately ill right after the event. The hospital, or rather what was left of it, as some of it had fallen when the bombs fell, was overrun with injured and dying citizens.

Merna fought to get Savannah inside for treatment, even if it were for nothing more than palliative care.

She pleaded with anyone she could find, offering money, offering everything she had left, which wasn’t much. She told them she was a doctor with the Los Angeles Psychiatric Services Department, hoping the word ‘doctor’ would get her the help she needed, but she was turned away, out of hand.

The staff at Mount Sinai hospital were doing everything they could to provide care to the hundreds of people filling its emergency departments to capacity. Finding no help, she tried some of the smaller physician offices, but they too were clogged with scores of people needing care.

Wandering aimlessly from place to place, Merna lay sobbing in a trash-filled culvert, her daughter, clutched in her arms, wrapped in a thin blanket she pulled from a trash bin.

They were both half-frozen from the cold. Merna’s shoulders bounced feebly with each ragged breath she took. Her wails were carried away on the thin winter winds, unheard on in the lonely watches of the small hours of the night.

She caressed Savannah’s severely dehydrated and comatose body in her arms. Her last act as a mother wasn’t to tuck her child into a soft bed, safe from the evils of the world or to tell her a bedtime story about princesses, living in stone castles, surrounded by drawbridges and living happily ever after with their gallant princes.

Nor was it to put her child’s long blonde hair up in yellow ribbons and curls. No, her last act was merciful. Merciful, but terrible.

Merna placed her frozen, mud-covered hands over Savannah’s nose and mouth, clamping them tightly to her small face, and suffocated what frail spark of life was left inside the dying girl. The child passed away in her arms to meet up with other little angels in heaven.

Tears flooded and pooled in Merna’s eyes. They fell in large drops, one after another, onto her blouse dampening it, darkening the material in places. Merna did what she felt she must. No matter how horrible.

The vision of those days from not-so-long-ago faded. Dr. Merna Valentine pulled herself away from the thoughts of her tragic past and forced herself to return to the present, where she finds herself standing once again in the darkened corridor, lit only by random flashes of lightning. She continues to sob softly as a clap of thunder rumbles outside.

Tomorrow, she would have to pay a visit to Dr. Shaw. As much as she couldn’t stand the man, this had to be reported… but… tomorrow.

Every discovery of new behaviors could bring them one step closer to saving the affected children and bringing closure to her and peace to Savannah, no matter how slight the chance of it might be.

Chapter Six

“There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.”

-Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

The rolling stool, in the dead center of the operating room, squeaks beneath Dr. Shaw, as he turns it from side to side, only inches, back and forth, over and over again.

The overhead light isn’t quite yet in the optimal position. Shaw adjusts it accordingly to minimize the casting of his shadow. His gloved hand grips the center handle and firmly guides it to just the right place, then he says, “There, that’s better,” aloud and to himself because the anesthesiologist isn’t needed for this procedure.

Lily is quite dead now. Several hours have passed since R – Zero – One – E was first wheeled into the room. Her body cools rapidly beneath the skilled fingers of the doctor.

He’s taken multiple specimens tonight: skin, muscle, bone, and samples from her red-colored eyes. Red, like all the others, except for Rose’s, which are an absurd radiant violet-color.

Her eyes glimmered like an amethyst in the operating room lights. And what she did earlier in the research room was remarkable.

He forces himself to deal with the issue at hand, and for now, that’s working on Lily’s body. There will be time enough, and very soon, to get access to Rose. He’ll have to get permission from Connors though. If nothing more than to put an end to Valentine’s constant interference.

Tonight, along with the few samples he’s already collected, he’ll also take Lily’s brain. It will be the first brain he’s been able to study since all this happened.

He is anxious and excited to discover how the affliction has compromised the organ. If the affliction, or infection, or whatever this is that he’s dealing with has managed to cross the blood-brain barrier. He presumes it has. One way or another, the findings should prove rather interesting.

The bone saws have been appropriately sterilized and are waiting on a nearby mayo stand. He hopes tonight he will be one step closer to ending the nightmare that began in Los Angeles. He wasn’t there when it happened. He’d been assigned to Camp Able as the Chief Surgeon, four years before the whole nasty affair began, way the hell off in Cali, before Major Connors and Dr. Valentine showed up knocking on the fence post looking for shelter. And besides the anesthesiologist and a few of the soldiers, the whole lot of the rest of them are transplants from ground zero.

He keeps the faith that he will find a weakness in the what some are now calling the Turned. By studying the so-called ‘children,’ he should be able to find some way of destroying the things in mass numbers.

Once he finds a way to disrupting the homeostasis of the monsters, then he will use it to destroy the research subjects as well. He chuckles to himself. He thinks the term, ‘children’ is nothing more than a joke. That was a thorn-in-his-side. It was Dr. Valentine who started calling them ‘children’ the day she set foot on Camp Able’s soil and found that they were being kept for research purposes. He cringed then, when he heard her say it, and it still makes him feel disgusted. It’s like letting a child name a chicken or duck, knowing how difficult it will be to slaughter the animal when the time comes to eat it.

Repeatedly, in the past, he has tried to redirect her irrational thought processes; her belief that they are the redeemable spawn of human parents. These are not children. They once were, but not anymore. They are most certainly, quite certifiably, monsters. The ‘child’ in each of them, abducted by the affliction.

Shaw knows that Dr. Valentine thinks she can save them all. They cannot be saved. Give it up, Valentine. They can’t be cured. They will never be innocents again. He shakes his head, no, they must all die… every one of them.

Neville.

Dr. Shaw turns the squeaky stool seat, searching for the person who called his name. It was a lady’s voice. It was faint, but he was sure he heard it. A woman called to him, the voice sounded familiar. But he can see no one, through the O.R. window, except for the guards posted there.

Neville.

There it is again. Must be Dr. Valentine coming to stir up the cauldron with the stick end of her witch’s broom. As he turns to continue collecting the specimens. He stops and exhales. He’s exhausted. He lowers his head to where the cleft of his chin rests gently on his chest. He thinks he knows the voice, but it can’t be.

Neville.

No, it is. It’s Laura. It’s impossible. How could he have forgotten the sweetness of it, or the panic within it the last time he heard it calling to him. He’s still haunted by her voice.

He wakes in the night to see her leaning over him, her ghost accusing him of making such a horrendous decision. But it seems so very long ago, and now she’s dead.

It was a long time ago.

“Neville, there’re rats in here.”

“Laura?” he ran to the cramped bedroom they used to share together, off base. His wife was collecting some of their belongings so that she could take them back to Camp Able and set up some semblance of a normal home for them. He has the baby tucked safely in one arm, and she’s chuckling all the way as he bounces her down the hallway on his hip.

He threw the door open wide to find Laura standing on the bed, biting her fingernails, as at least half a dozen large rats scatter into whatever hole or cubby they can find.

Their house was within sight of the base, just a mile or so outside the confines of the fence. What was he thinking? That this was going to be a family outing? The soldiers didn’t want him to go outside the fences. So, in the end, when he insisted that he and Laura were going to retrieve some of their belongings and no one could stop them, one soldier had been ordered to accompany the doctor and his wife and their newborn.

Like an idiot, he didn’t bother to consider that they would be in danger. The reports of the Turned were still scattered at best, and the sightings and attacks were isolated and more prominent in remote locations in the western reaches of the state.

He wanted to give Laura an opportunity to get the things that meant the most to her. Things which would be lost had she not come. He didn’t know how bad things would eventually get, and if they would ever see their house again.

The smell of formalin pulls him from that dreadful day, and he finds himself looking into Lily’s glassy eyes. He takes a core sample of her iris, and cornea, and pushes the collected tissue into a small specimen container. It floats down, spiraling into the preservative, finally coming to rest on the bottom of the jar.

Just like dear little Lily here, he’ll bring the research subjects in, one at a time, and study them until he has an answer… the answers… whatever answers he may glean from his countless hours leaning over specimen containers, and agar plates, and microscopes. Even Rose will come in… eventually to be studied until there is nothing left to study, not even the smallest piece of connective tissue.

Neville!

The voice calls to him again. Louder. But this time he knows it for what it is. A phantom of the past, a torturous condemnation that would never let him forget the choice to leave the safety of the base, with his beautiful, frightened wife, and defenseless child. Only a fool, he knows now, would have done such a stupid thing. And he pays the price for his ignorance, every long, long day without the two little lights of his life.

A few boxes of odds and ends, a family photo album, and a some extra changes of clothing were all that they’d managed to save from the gnawing teeth of the rats.

Before he opened the door to the living room, to walk back outside to the jeep, and leave their home for the last time, both he and Laura took one final look around their dust-coated living room. Laura took the baby from her husband and held her close to her breast as she cried softly.

Laura said nothing as she turned and opened the door to walk, bravely, from their home. As the door opened, it did so onto the side of a blood-strewn jeep, and tattered remains of an olive-green military uniform.

It was too late for him to help Laura and the baby. She stepped onto the redwood porch before he could stop her, he tried to reach for her, for the baby, but it was a fruitless gesture.

That thing, that monstrous congealed heap of an unearthly creature, and the human pieces dangling from it, was on top of them before he could react.

Laura screamed, the child shrieked. Mercifully, it was over before they had realized the end had come. They had been snatched away from him and out of his life forever.

It hadn’t seen him. Too busy engorging itself on his wife and young daughter’s limp corpses. Neville Washington Shaw disappeared into the shadows of the house. He buried himself in the closet of the bedroom he had shared with Laura.

The rats clawed and ate at him for hours until the soldiers from Camp Able came and found him cowering there.

He shakes his head to clear the image from his mind, he knows it won’t stay away for long. He shakes the lingering fragments of the past away and wipes the tears from his clouded eyes with the sleeve of his lab coat.

Yes, these things will answer for the loss of his wife and his sweet baby girl. The Turned and the research subjects are one in the same, MONSTERS! Predators. That’s all, and nothing more.

He will keep going, keep cutting, keep digging. Deeper and deeper, until he has a remedy that will take them down once and for all, no matter what, no matter how long it takes. And, should he run out of subjects before he has all the answers, he’ll have the soldiers collect more, and repeat the process all over again.

But, for now, he still has too many questions, some questions to which he already knows the answers. But the most important answer still eludes and taunts him, like for instance, why are the affected children so different than affected adults?

Perhaps it’s because the physiology of the pediatric host is markedly different than that of the adult host population.

Of course, they reacted differently to the affliction. But why did they not undergo the physical transformations… mutations… that the adult victims had undergone?

He could only theorize; the pediatric bodies were a perfect, hospitable host, accepting whatever contamination they had met in the first place, during the initial event.

Dr. Valentine had said it was something that had fallen out of the object.

Perhaps the contamination is parasitic in nature and not an infection at all.

Yet no parasite has been confirmed in any of the subjects’ specimens to date. None of the samples came back positive for any parasitical infestation whatsoever.

He remains perplexed and frustrated, and anxious… impatient to a heightened degree. He has the feeling he’s chasing his tail, tugging at endless strings. Chasing squirrels, in fact.

Shaw turns his past research over and over in his brain, one bewildering stone at a time, looking for anything he might have missed. Replaying the tapes will take days.

He cuts Lily’s scalp with a number 10 scalpel. The incision is made from her right ear to her left ear, across the top of her head.

Her sticky blood drools onto the autopsy table and puddles like thick syrup. Lines of the hemoglobin stretch like honey from the cut. He has tested the blood tirelessly. Whatever causes the thick, sticky substance in the blood is still an unidentified, mystery component. Shaw is no hematologist.

He’s unfamiliar with the element which has merged with the hemoglobin causing, what appears to be purposeful coagulation of sorts; designed by intent and supporting the optimal hemostasis of the host’s body, and whatever the hell else is in it.

He peels Lily’s scalp gently forward. The feeling of it opening to reveal a potential clue, to an answer, to anyone of his questions is an exhilarating prospect.

Her small skull is partially exposed, and the fresh smell of raw human tissue reaches him. He pinches his surgical mask tighter to the bridge of his nose, leaving blood-stained prints on it. He pays the smell of it no mind and proceeds with the procedure as planned.

The temporalis muscle releases the scalp from the skull easily. Shaw peels it away by prodding the connecting tissues with his fingertips. A faint tearing sound accompanies the action; it satisfies his need to look inside the girl. He dissects the temporalis muscle with the scalpel and folds it forward until the flap lays across her nose, concealing her death-stare.

It’s time for the bone saw. The clunky instrument springs to life filling the room with a whine. He forgoes making the notch that will allow him to place the skull back together after he removes the brain from its hiding place. No crying parents are waiting for their dead child to come back, presentable as an unblemished lamb, after an autopsy.

The saw’s teeth dig in, excavating a narrow channel through the bone, circumferentially around the exposed rise skull. The smell of heated bone lifts into the air covering the smell of raw flesh. The grinding hum of the saw disrupts the silence of the procedure room, rebounding from the surface of the indifferent walls, tiled in colors of sky blue and dazzling white.

Splinters of bloody bone marrow sputter from the saw blade, rising into the air. A moist, red canopy of bio-sludge falling to rest in muddy clumps on his shoes.

All the cuts have been made in precisely the right place. He removes the skull cap to expose the brain, by popping the loosening the corners with a Ragnell retractor where the saw didn’t connect the four channels. Reaching for a scalpel with a longer handle, he slices the tissue which connects the brain to the inside of the skull, cleanly.

With a few more delicate swipes of the blade, he removes the brain, reaching in with steady hands. Carefully. So carefully. He exhales long and slow. If he’s been holding his breath the entire time he is unaware of doing so, but it feels like he must have. He’s mildly dizzy with hope. He inhales and lets his breath out again, slowly, to release the stress which is building upon his shoulder making him want to shrug away the burning sensation. But he can’t shrug the stress away now. He must move his whole body in concert with the delicate organ he holds in his hands. Lily’s brain. Turning it to look at it from various angles, he frowns before lowering it to the autopsy table. The brain is completely unremarkable in every way.

The stool groans with the effort of supporting his full weight, as he settles back. He folds his bloody surgical gloves in his hands and sighs deeply shrugging the tightness and discomfort in his back and shoulders.

Unremarkable; the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, and the basal ganglia, all appear to be normal. Disappointing to say the least. The color, the shape, and the size of the sulci and gyrus of the subject’s brain appear to be what he would have expected to find in a girl of Lily’s age, who had died from normal causes, but this girl is far from typical… far from human. She’s one of them. She’s Turned. Damn. There should have been something. Some swelling, some infection, or an anomalous finding.

He closes his heavy, aching eyelids. He rubs them hard, but not hard enough to rub out the sight of the normal brain. They are still closed when the sucking-sound gets his attention. He opens them sluggishly. Unremarkable, hell. The brain pulses in random places; the angular gyrus, the middle frontal gyrus, the superior temporal gyrus, and Wernicke’s area… almost imperceptive pulses, every one, but nonetheless…  it was pulsing and only for a second or two, but it did pulse. It was more than electrical pulses or spasms. Something was pushing on the tissue from within. Like an unborn baby moving within its mother’s womb Something is on the inside of the brain itself.

Chapter Seven

“People die… Beauty fades… Love changes… And you will always be alone.”

-L.J. Smith, Night World, No. 3

Major Connors and Sergeant Hollander are hunkered down in the well-worn seats of a 1944 Ford, bomb service truck; its engine turned off a short while ago still pops and crackles as is cools in the late hours of the evening.

Sgt. Hollander takes what’s left of a stale, chewed-up cigar from the pocket of his fatigues. He picked it up from a handmade, clay ashtray, in an old abandoned house yesterday during a supply run. He tests the tip with his teeth, biting into it gingerly, not enough to break the dry wrapping.

Major Connors busies himself, scanning the sun-baked street before them for signs of movement. The truck is an awkward centerpiece at a four-way intersection, taking up a good portion of it. It’s not as if anyone will want to try to pass. The streets are empty of other moving vehicles and have been for a long time. There’re some cars still on the streets, but they’re only occupants are desiccated bodies. Those who waited too long to evacuate.

The bomb service truck’s nose points toward Elizabeth Street. It’s the best vantage point in town. Everywhere else is congested with bodies and debris or has way too many blind spots for the majors liking.

Four days and three nights away from Camp Able has placed Connors right on edge. He’s dirty, and he can smell himself. It’s not pleasant. Smelling Hollander’s reek is no treat either.

Hollander’s his same optimistic self, talking incessantly about how “When this is all over…” and “What I’ll do first is….” Connors ignores him as he always does when Hollander has nothing worthwhile to say.

Private White Deer; Camp Abel’s resident Chickasaw Indian, and Private Austin have been No Contact for over fifteen minutes, nineteen minutes to be more accurate, and that’s against protocol. But, Major Connors won’t call them on the radio. It might blow their position should they be squatting down somewhere and trying to keep a low profile.

“…a steak… this thick. Oh man, I can taste it. Can you taste it, Major?” Hollander holds his forefinger and thumb a good four inches apart measuring the imaginary steak. “Oh, and a tall glass of good ol’ Irish whiskey. Don’t forget the whiskey. The kind that burns all the way down and warms you from the top of your head all the way down to toes.”

He chews on the soggy butt of the cigar letting the tobacco juice slide down his throat, making it clear that he is relishing the moment with the looks of pure delight on his face. He spits out a small piece of tobacco leaf that sticks to the tip of his tongue, out the open driver’s side window, and continues to yammer with a gravelly southern drawl.

Connors is only half-listening, scrutinizing the street for any surprises. He reminds Hollander to be keeping his eyes on the three sixty.

Hollander squirms uncomfortably in his seat, repositioning himself and intensifying his focus on the buildings surrounding their position. It’s not long before he resumes the previous discussion. “When this whole thing is over, major, the first thing I’m going to do is find the first finest redhead I can, get a cheap motel room, rip her dress right off, and….” Static interrupts Hollander’s lewd thought process.

“—White Deer to Major Connors, come in, Major. Over.” The radio crackles unnervingly loud, but Connors doesn’t turn it down. The sotto voice of Private White Deer fades in and out on the SCR-536 walkie-talkie, mounted on the dashboard, cluttered with bottles and food wrappers.

The radio should be getting a better signal. The major figures the interference must be in correlation to the surrounding buildings and businesses along Elizabeth Street. He acknowledges the call by saying, “Connors here. Over.”

One lone bead of sweat dangles and drips from his pulsating right temple. It runs downward following Connors’s crow’s foot finally to wet his eyeball. He rubs away the sting of the perspiration. The Texas sun, slipping down the face of the sky, is scorching. Connors sometimes thinks it might be possible for the State of Texas to be closer to the sun than the rest of the planet, by at least a few million miles.

He is getting close to calling an end to the search. He bites his bottom lip, considering putting a search for his missing men to bed. The runners failed to return to base on time and were now, way overdue. “Any sign of the runners, White Deer? Over.” Harsh static answers Connors, initially. He waits for the signal to strengthen.

White Deer’s voice rises above the interference, but the first part of the message was lost to bad signal. “… but it doesn’t look too good, Major. We found Private Parson’s pack, full of groceries and meds, dropped right smack down in the middle of Fifth and South Point.”

Connors guts writhe, his mind settles in for the worst-case scenario; he’s lost two more men. He’s ready for this to end. He thought that staying put at Camp Able would limit the losses. And, he guesses it has, for the most part. That, and sticking close to the base for supply runs. Every now and then, though, you lose people, and every time he loses a man, he sets his mind to keeping with his plan, which is fortifying Able and staying close to home, for however long that may be. There’s no need to go anywhere and chance losing everything and get everyone killed.

A folded area map lays on the dash against the windshield. It’s sun-bleached but still useful. He unfolds it, puts his reading glasses on, and scans it for location White Deer gave. He finds it tapping a finger on the spot. He listens to White Deer’s interpretation of what he and Private Austin discovered.

“It’s pretty good stuff: canned goods, preserves, a couple cartons of cigarettes, and a bunch of aspirin. They would’ve never dropped this stuff unless they had to high-tail it out of here in a big hurry.” Static disturbs the communication briefly. “…tracks on Lieutenant Grayson. Over.”

Connors asks the Private to clarify his last transmission, hoping that they may have found one of the runners, but unfortunately the clarification that comes is that there is no sign other than the dropped pack, of either of the runners. And that’s not the worst of it.

“We have some movement, Major, standby.”

Connors keeps to protocol, one that he wrote himself. No transmissions when there’re eyes on an unfriendly. He wipes grime and sweat from his brow, takes a swig from his canteen sitting it down near his feet to continue to wait for White Deer to send word of the situation.

Hollander’s eyes scrape like sandpaper trying to remove the peeling paint from Elizabeth Street’s empty storefronts. Five excruciating minutes pass while Connors taps his boot on the floor panel. Much more waiting will have him put a hole right through it.

White Deer whispers one word that’s wrapped in a light blanket of static, but it’s clear enough for Connors to make out something that turns the blood in his veins to a river of ice.

“—Turned—”

More static and a pause.

“We have eyes on a target moving south-southeast. Awaiting orders, sir. Over.”

“Identify the unfriendly, and give me a headcount, White Deer. Over,” says the major. He holds his breath, not wanting to hear what he fears he might, hoping the situation doesn’t go from, oh, crap, to holy shit.”

“—ked Briars, Major. We have eyes on one… no, wait… we have eyes on two, sir. Repeat, two, Wicked Briars, coming up the road as bug ugly as you can imagine.”

As bad as it is, it could be worse, for now, it’s just at ‘oh, crap’ level. Wicked Briars are bad enough. They’re hard as anything to put down and ticked off from the word ‘go.’ A human being twisted and mangled into a shape, reminding those who see it as a cross between a long-legged scorpion and a devil crab, if you can picture that.

The creatures are fearsome foes of inconceivable terror, to say the very least; engineered in the mind of a cursed soul, shrouded in nightmarish skin stretched over a shell of thorny armor.

Residual pieces of the human being it once was, slough from the Wicked Briar, leaving the scent of rotting death in their wake. Trailing shreds of carrion on the ground behind it, like dead leaves left for the buzzards to peck at. The merged human torso and head are usually the only remnants remaining, glued to the undercarriage of the exoskeleton. The human anatomy pushed back and protected beneath it. The best way to kill it is to hit the human head dangling underneath, a challenge to hit, or to completely devastate the thing entirely a well-placed explosive.

And they’re not a brainless animal moving from place to place like cattle, they’re intelligent and crafty, spinning heavy-duty strands of material into a vast network of wicked webs. Any attempt to move through the webbing is like cutting through a dense forest of briars. The webs can put the hurts on even the largest, heavy-duty vehicles; shedding tires, and in some cases piercing radiators. They cut you off and hem you in, and then you’re on the menu, plain and simple. So, it’s best to avoid’em altogether.

Still, the Wicked Briars aren’t as bad as some of the other things Connors has heard tale about. Grubs, for instance, bury themselves below ground and reach from their burrows to drag down any poor soul who steps on the wrong spot, and no one knows what they do to their victims below the earth. Connors shivers trying hard not to think about it.

And then there are the Doldrums, so far as Connors is concerned, these are still a myth, like Bigfoot, or the Easter Bunny, because he hasn’t seen one for himself, and until he does he’ll mark it as bovine excrement. A couple of reports surfaced from Laughlin Air Force Base a few months back. It said something was attacking the men who were outside the fences after dark, no one ever saw anything. The reports said, whatever it was, came from the shadows. It came out and took the men. The morning after, only blood and a few bone chips were all that was ever found of the missing.

Connors is a man, who believes none of what he hears, and only half of what he sees. He prefers to make his own judgment. That’s the problem with these, so-called Doldrums, you can’t see them, they hunt from the shadows and feed in the safety of the darkness. The world is full enough of the creepy-crawlies you can see. Doldrums, if they do exist, sound extra special dangerous, like a shark swimming up from the depths to feed on the occasional swimmer.

The thing that really takes the cake… the thing that eats him up the most… are the little bastards back at Camp Able. No one knows what they are, but they aren’t like any children he’d ever seen. Well, maybe just on the outside. Hell, no one even knows exactly what they can do either, but he’d seen those kids do some weird stuff with his own two eyes. He wants to give them a one-way ticket off the base, but Shaw insists on keeping them around for now, because he thinks he’ll find a magic potion or a silver bullet to eradicate them from the planet. I sure hope we can get’em before they get us. Connors shakes his head to clear the thoughts away. He needs to keep his wits about him and get his tail over to the men hunkering down on Fifth and South Point. There’s work to be done.

Grabbing the M41 helmets and weapons, Major Connors and Sgt. Hollander slog their way over to the last known location of his men. They stay low to the ground, slinking around buildings and abandoned cars. Playing it smooth so not to bring unwanted attention to themselves.

The sun is beating down on the men in waves of unrelenting heat. The sweat rolls off them by the pint, soaking their clothes, so they stick to their backs and legs. Every breath is like sticking your head into a brick-fired oven.

From time to time the major can hear the emerald and black cicadas, that hang in the boughs of the heat-scorched elm trees of Brownsville, Texas. They chirrup and flutter transparent, rice-paper wings in the canopy of dense treetops. Connors scours the street, the last known location of White Deer, but he nor Austin is anywhere to be found.

Where are they? He scans the area again, slower, in case he missed anything. His focus is erratic, his eyes baking in his head from the heat. He suspects dehydration. It’s a regular occurrence nowadays. His head pounds with each beat of his heart, his mouth and tongue are dry, and he can’t remember the last time he pissed. Was it last night? Not good. He left his dog soup in the truck. Rookie mistake. Thirst gnaws at him deeply, and the grit in his throat magnifies the condition if nothing more than to irritate him. Suck it up, major… you’re getting soft in your old age. Instinct drives him to the pavement, so forcefully it nearly knocks the wind from his lungs. Hollander throws himself to the ground, behind the major.

He lifts his eyes upward, dragging them across the jagged elevation of the buildings. Bingo. White Deer is hanging his head far enough over a rooftop for Connors to catch a glimpse of him. Connors and Hollander get ready to move again, checking their gear and changing position, so they aren’t lying on the broiling roadway anymore, but before they can move, a bulky form passes, and then another follows the first across the major’s peripheral vision. Both men drop again, harder this time, but without almost any sound.

Two Wicked Briars scuttle across the road, not far from where the lay in hiding, and disappear into a parking garage in across the street. One beast follows the other. The first carries some sort of dead animal. It flops like wet dough with each step of the Wicked Briar. The creature carries its prize in its flesh-colored foreclaws.

“We have to get a better look at this. Have you ever seen anything like it before?” says the major. He wishes like hell Shaw or Valentine were here to see this behavior.

Hollander shakes his head, “Never. It’s unusual that’s for sure.”

The Wicked Briars move onward seemingly oblivious to the fact they’ve picked up a tailing party of humans. They travel down the road chittering and squawking to one another. Finger-snapping echoes reverberate softly against brick and wooden-clad exteriors as their armor tipped claws scrape and clack upon the street pavers.

Connors dares not to go any further without first meeting up with his men. He allows the colossal freaks to move away and out of sight, long enough for he and the sergeant to make a detour to the roof of O’Leary’s Drug Store.

“Did you call for an evac?” Connors smiles a crooked smile. It’s an awkward, lopsided grin framed by sun-dried and peeling lips.

White Deer is slumped down against the roofline, sopping up the salty sweat, pouring from his reddish-brown skinned forehead, with a blue-checkered handkerchief.

Austin carefully peers over the edge of the rooftop. “Jesus H.,” mutters Austin, never taking his eyes from the street below, “I thought ya’d never get off ya butts and get up here. What, were you two having a picnic down there?”

“Aw, now don’t take it to personal, major, he’s been bellyaching for the past two hours,” says White Deer who has the long barrel of a flamethrower resting across his lap. It bobs with each deep breath he takes.

The major assesses the situation creating a tactical plan in his head. He’s deadly serious, he must be, it takes much more effort anymore for him to concentrate.

“Hubba, Hubba. Would ya just get a load of Jane and her sister down there… I think they might be Khaki-Whacky. What do ya say, boys? Ya in the mood for some dates fellas?”

“I think the suns getting to you, Austin,” says Hollander.

Connors takes one last look down at the Wicked Briars and jogs to the ladder which runs down the side of the building and leads to the alleyway below.

The time for joking is at an end, so Austin dries up his comedy bit. They need to stand on their get-alongs and move out and move out now.

The stairs make a sharp squeaking noise as the four of them descend. No matter what they do; soft steps, slow steps, skipping treads, the stairs creak obnoxiously loud.

Once their brown, legging-topped, boots hit the dry red gravel, they cross the road to follow the things’ path which ultimately leads into a foreboding parking garage; five floors high.

Austin levels his Winchester M1987 shotgun, and White Deer lofts the flamethrower. It’s heavy and fully fueled, but White Deer is a huge, muscular man, so it’s not a problem for him.

Connors and the Sergeant Hollander ready their M1 Springfield rifles, and file in single line and tread after the Wicked briars.

The gloom of the garage can’t be helped. There’s no more electricity in Brownsville. The sun is diving toward the horizon and the shadow blankets the concrete floor as if it is pushing the men up and in faster than they are willing to go. Regardless, they proceed to take the site, step by cautious step.

The Major holds his hand in the air and clenches his fist, he unclenches it, and then clenches once more, before returning his grip to his weapon; it feels good in his hands.

The men hold their advance and to group up, tight. It’s thought that grouping together makes you appear larger and perhaps more menacing to the Turned, its well-rehearsed and carried out with precision.

The soldiers take the corner, walking up the gradual slope. The ramp leads to the second level. The realization that their way is being barred by two seething beasts comes like discovering there’s a rattlesnake in your sleeping bag. The situation has officially escalated to holy shit level.

Austin, always jackrabbit-jumpy, bolts from the group and half-ass fires in the direction of the Wicked Briars. The blast from his shotgun rings off the tight confines of the garage walls.

White Deer follows and pulls the flamethrower’s trigger, to release a blast of blistering heat slaps the faces of all four men, causing each to veer away to escape the blistering heat.

An ungodly scream of pain, or maybe it’s one of anger, comes from one of the Turned. The scream rakes across Connors’s tympanic membranes. Hollander fires his rifle and flanks out to the left. The discharge of the rifle can be felt beneath the feet of the soldiers as it travels through the iron and concrete construction of the garage.

Connors’s ears ring from the assault of the shot so close to his head. Tight quarters. He stumbles. He won’t back away from the threat until he pulls his three brothers away from assured death. He pulls. He pushes, he shouts for retreat. He heaves them away from the enemy one by one.

A muzzle flash from the shotgun. Shouting and fighting fills the ramp which ascends to level two, with maddening chaos. The Turned have the high ground. They outweigh the soldiers making them look like tiny children fighting against something three times their size.

The towering goliaths punch, jab, stab and kick. They make a great effort to skewer the soldiers. The beasts spear, and slice, and attempt to run their enemies through cleanly. One disemboweling swipe is all that’s needed. A near miss here and there. The beasts can’t connect with the bodies of the human interlopers.

A pike-like foreclaw pierces the windshield of a black 1937 Ford Coup, shattering it.

Connors fires at closer range than he’d prefer, two yards and some change, at most. His volley bounces off one of the armored plates on the torso of the creature. If the major had been six inches more to the right, he might have caught the ricochet in the throat.

The soldiers are repelled by the Wicked Briars. White Deer sprays flame wide arcs of ignited fuel that washes over the monsters. It’s nothing more than a deterrent if anything that harmlessly blackens the tough spiked epidermis of the angry creatures.

Connors, Hollander, and Austin draw their sidearms and fire in rapid succession. Ammo ricochets and pockmarks the garage walls, propelling lead slugs on unintended trajectories, hitting Austin in the shoulder. He falls. Connors helps him to his feet.

The men are shoved back to the landing of level one and the major, again, orders the men to retreat, but to stay tight. He knows separating would make it easy for the Wicked Briars to pick them off, like penny candy. Before the major can stop him, Austin makes run for cover, but finding none, keeps running leaving droplets of blood on the road behind him.

“Private! Get your ass back here!” says Connors his throat hoarse from the dry evening heat. He ducks, narrowly missing the incoming slice of a foreclaw and it passes harmlessly over his head.

The beasts separate, and one gives chase after, Austin. The pursuit is hot and heavy. Connors can’t afford the time to put eyes on him. They’re dealing with their own life and death struggle.

The distance between, Austin, and the demon on his heels is closing rapidly. He skids making a hairpin turn down an alleyway, nearly falling, his guts churn at the prospect, boots sliding on loose gravel, the smell of the soles disintegrating on the street, but he’s able to keep his feet under him. He grabs at rubbish bins as he passes them. Throws them haphazard into the path of the pursuer, which hurdles it with minimal effort.

A furniture delivery truck blocks the far end of the alley. Austin looks for an alternate route. There’re none to take. Time’s ticking down for him. Prayers are running through his head, rapid-fire. The Wicked Briar slows to conserve energy. Signals being sent to its brain that victory is near. Or, perhaps it wants to prolong the gut-wrenching fear that’s going through the quarry’s mind.

Austin backs away from the Turned until his back presses into something hard. He draws his sidearm. Doom, in the shape of a radiator grill, impedes his way to freedom. The sidearm falls to the ground. It lands with a crunch on the rough gravel, at his feet. Reaching into a pouch connected to his web-belt. He feels the rough sensation of the egg. It teases his fingers. The oblong object emerges from his waist bag. It looks like a pinecone, with a key-pin hanging from its top. The words “Hail Mary” are written on it, in white paint.

He squeezes his finger through a tiny loop, connected to a pin on top and holds the small trigger lever down with his palm. His hands shake nervously. Sweat drips. He shakes his head but catches himself and stops. He won’t beg, like a pathetic excuse for a man, as if he could beg for his life anyway. He’ll go out like the United States soldier he is. The killer coming for him can’t be reasoned with. It moves like a cat stalking its prey.

The beast shakes with anticipation. Thick, concentrated slobber run in ropy lines bleeding out between serrated teeth. Rearing up on its spindly hind legs it stabs out in hopes of spearing dinner. Opening its mouth wide fills the air with stench, and two ducts inside its mouth, each casting out fluid; one stream is red; the other is mucus yellow. As the two streams merge the liquids reconstitute into an unquenchable orange acid. The acid drenches Private Austin. He’s already dead where he’s standing, a dancing skeleton. The flesh of his hand melts away. The tendons underneath the flesh give under the weight of the heavy egg and snap apart like dried rubber bands. The grenade rolls and bounces, tumbling end over end until it comes to rest at the foreclaws the beast. Four short seconds later it explodes taking the creature to the deepest bowels of hell. Stalemate.

Connors, White Deer, and Hollander run for their lives. Connors naturally falls into the rear position, covering his men, and firing blindly over his shoulder, not even looking to see if he’s hitting anything, what does it matter? It’s not long before he hears the tale-tale clicking; out of ammo. The men head south, then east. The setting sun roasts their faces. An hour of sunlight stood between them and complete darkness.

White Deer turns. He braces himself. He sprays flame at the demon closing for the kill. The flame keeps the thing from tearing White Deer to pieces. It wails and arches away.

Hollander runs ahead, while Connors pulls at White Deer’s arm, signaling for him to follow. The three men make another direction change to head down Old Hardesty Road, only to find the way has been barred by a jumble of spiked webbing. Hollander pulls his bayonet and hacks away at the unforgiving and nearly indestructible barrier. The web resists the edge of the blade chipping the oil-hardened edge, making it appear saw-like after the hacking is abandoned.

A booming explosion from half a mile away rocks the desolate streets. It’s not a good sign. Private Austin always kept his Hail Mary close by for the ultimate sacrifice and would only use it as a final sayonara and a final offensive hand gesture to whatever got one over on him. Connors ticks off one man from tomorrow’s roster, hoping the base won’t have to fill several empty spaces on the list. He, Hollander, and White Deer may be facing the final moment here, but they won’t go down easy.

The Wicked Briar taunts the men. It must believe that it’s all over for the humans and that they’ve been bested by a superior lifeform. Crouches down, it prepares to leap and deliver a devastating attack. A mouth gleaming with rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth grows wide. It shakes its hindquarters readying for a victorious leap. It jumps. All four of its legs leave the ground, and White Deer tosses flamethrower’s fuel tank. The bulky reservoir lands directly in the cavernous, fang-filled hole.

The Wicked Briar, irritated by the intrusion, bites down with hundreds of pounds of force per square inch, breaching the tank wall, spraying fuel out everywhere. The liquid accelerant spews under pressure from multiple holes in the tank casing.

White Deer bounds toward the beast, firing his handgun at every step, and finally again, at point-blank range. It takes two shots before a slug scrapes a spark off the tank. The resulting fireball consumes the beast, incinerating most of it and broiling the rest. White Deer is thrown clear, landing with a bone-breaking crunch, against a stone retaining wall. His skin sloughing off, bubbling, and blistering.

Guts and limbs fly everywhere. Connors isn’t sure if it all belongs to the Wicked Briar or if some of it belongs to Private White Deer. They must sift through the gore to find his body, and when they do, they find him seriously burned from his head to his feet.

White Deer’s face is blistered and waxy from the explosion. Vacant, bloody holes substitute for his eyes which were blown out, leaving scant dribbles of vitreous humour to run from the empty, orbital sockets. What’s left of his clothes are smoldering rags. The acrid smell of burned tissue assaults the senses and triggers the gag reflex.

The streets rest in eerie repose in the post-battle haze. Except for incoherent moans of anguish spilling from White Deer’s melted lips, there is only silence.

Hollander removes the med kit from his backpack and injects White Deer with a shot of morphine. The large-gauge needle drills deep into his upper thigh. The little spit of opiate can’t squash the intolerable burning.

“We have to get him back to base, Major. He’s bad. Real bad.” The sergeant exams White Deer’s condition again, and adds, “Oh, God, we gotta get’im back to the docs, Major.”

“We’ll carry him back to the truck, but I’m coming back to get, Austin before we leave, and I want to get a look at whatever the hell those two Turned were up to, over at the garage before we leave. You’ll stay with him and do what you can. Let’s go.”

Within the hour White Deer has been carried to the truck. He speaks of things neither Connors nor Hollander understands, rambling in disjointed sentences and crying out in torment. The sergeant pulls the drapes from a post office window. He fashions a litter of sort, which makes the return trip to the bomb service truck far easier than carrying him alone.

Connors helps Sergeant Hollander lay White deer in the bed of the truck. This time he grabs his canteen full of dog soup and takes a generous swig of the water inside before heading back for Private Austin.

He steps softly on the ground, moving quietly to the point where he believes the explosion came from. There’s nothing but a shallow crater, the parameter of which is splattered with bones chips and blood. One boot and a pair of dog tags baring Private Austin’s name and information lay a few feet away from the epicenter of the blast. Connors pockets the tags for safe keeping, all the while chewing the inside of his cheek hard enough to keep from screaming in rage at the tops of his lungs. Lifting his face in the direction of the garage he approached it for the second time today.

The trip up to each level is less eventful than last time. Visions of Wicked Briars lurk behind every vehicle and lurk in the unseen recesses of the building. He climbs the last ramp, stepping harder, but no less quietly. This is the ramp which will lead him up to the topmost level. The smell of putrid death overpowers him immediately. He wretches, but nothing comes up. Bloated, black horseflies buzz around him, landing on his hands and face, and on his sweaty, salt-caked fatigues.

The last orange rays of the sun swim through red-tinted cirrus clouds. Stepping foot onto the flat upper level, there’s something else up here with the major. Connors doesn’t hesitate to raise his rifle and takes aim. But… it’s not needed.

The Wicked Briar he finds sheltering here is dying. Too weak to move even if it wasn’t tied down by long root-like tendrils undulating into mounded piles of dead animals, encircling it like a berm of festering roadkill. The garage was supposed to be a safe place to lay eggs and dine on the fetid tissues of dead things, serving as some sort of macabre fertilizer.

The roof-top fiend sprawls there, melded with a human torso like two candles melted into one. They’re two separate beings entwined in a ghoulish demise. Its sagging, sun-leathered breasts make it a no-brainer. This thing was once a human female, but now, what’s left of the woman cascades like a macabre clay sculpture coming to rest below the beast like discarded baggage, or a benign tumor. Sparse and straggling strands of, brassy-red hair blow, as if each strand were dying blades of grass, swaying in the late-evening winds. The eyes are clouded over with cataracts, and the tongue is swollen and black.

He moves his lips, but no sound comes out, he can count on one hand, how many times in his life he’s been completely speechless. Shaking his head in disbelief, he shrugs his shoulders. He can’t understand what he’s seeing. He has no idea what’s happening. He needs to know what this means.

What are you doing way up here? Approaching the Wicked Briar, he avoids any rapid movements and prepares himself to make a quick exit. His rifle is still up and ready to fire at any sign of aggression. Don’t get close to this thing… have I gone loony or something?

The demon recoils from his presence. He’s startled by the reaction. In fact, he nearly soils his pants. Flaps of striated flesh on the Wicked Briar’s back flare out like beetle’s wings. Black pods fall out of follicles in the ‘wings.’ When they strike the concrete, they make solid thumping sounds before breaking to pieces like charcoal briquettes.

Connors reaches into his pack. He takes out the small first aid tin. It’s empty. He keeps it on hand should anything, exactly like the thing happing now, should ever happen and he should need to take a sample back to the base for the doctors to have a gander at.

He argues with himself. He needs to get back to the truck and get White Deer to the base. Leave the sample and go. But he convinces himself. It’s best to take it back with him. The doctors may be able to figure out what it is he’s discovered. Maybe this is an important step to understanding how to get rid of these creatures. Unlikely, yes, but it could help. Even if not, it’s one more thing they can learn about the enemy. Swearing a string of obscenities under his breath, he scoops up several of the fragile pods.

The truck awaits his return, as does Hollander. Driving back to base through the occupied enemy territory, in the dark, will hopefully be uneventful. As far as he’s concerned, they must get White Deer some medical treatment, so although night has fallen, it’s back to Camp Able, a hot shower, a soft bed, and a good ol’ cup of that thick crap they’re calling coffee.

Chapter Eight

“I ran blindly through the madhouse… And I cannot even pray… for I have no God.”

-Grant Morrison

A rifle-stock to the ribs knocks the air from her lungs. She’s manhandled into her section and pressed into place. Rose stands stock-still fearing what the green men might do to her if she steps out of line. They seem extra short tempered today, but it’s not much worse than any other day. As a rule, they stay angry with the children.

It’s library day. It’s not her favorite day, because her favorite day is when she can talk to Dr. Valentine in the Assessment room, but it is her second best favorite day.

Rose has noticed that Lily isn’t in line with them, nor was she in line yesterday, either. She misses Lily terribly. She doesn’t really know the girl, and though she isn’t friends with her, she thinks that maybe they could be the very best of friends. Maybe Lily will be back tomorrow, and I’ll start to make friends with her then. Maybe she’s just not feeling well, or something.

When Rose’s section arrives at the library, and everyone is released from their shackles, Rose doesn’t choose A History of Man, From Prehistory to Present Da, this time. She learned all she needed to know about Man on her last visit to the library. She wasn’t impressed.

Man, as a species, is a wild and stupid, war-faring animal, with no thoughts for anything other than itself, and what it can gain by taking advantage of other Men. Man is destructive, arrogant, and irreversibly flawed with few, if any, saving graces. Man, as an animal is greedy and everything it does or achieves in life is usually fueled by the promise of reward for itself. Man, as a creation is destructive, perverse, and small. Deep down she doesn’t feel like Man, as a sentient being, deserves anything more than what it brings upon itself, which, in the end, is usually self-destruction.

She’s studied the book from cover to back. She read every word of it, every line, absent-mindedly chewing her tongue as she does when she’s focusing very hard on a thing, absorbing it. So, no, she doesn’t need to read, A History of Man, From Prehistory to Present Day this time.

Instead, she pulls a smaller book with a cheery little cover from the bottom row of shelves. She turns her head slightly to observe the green men from the corner of her eye. They’re still safely in the cage. They’re not watching her. They’re far more interested in the infamous troublemaker, Hawthorne, but for now, he’s too busy deciding what he wants to read to cause too much trouble. There’ll be time enough for discord later.

Rose’s tiny fingers grasp the book, The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Gently she turns it over and over again in her little hands, inspecting its worn, cloth-papered cover. Little threads are poking out from the corners of the hardcover. The sight of it makes her smile, but not so much that a green man will come out of the cage and wipe it off her face with a well-placed slap.

The spine of it has come slightly loose from the pages inside, but she carries it back to her seat, the same chair she sat in before is now occupied by a boy. He doesn’t bother to take notice of her. She simply stands there before she decides to take another chair instead because one of the green men is rapping on the cage with his rifle, to usher her along.

She reads to herself, painting pictures of each scene in her mind. She’s distracted when Hawthorne whistles his favorite tune, and it’s repeated by both green men in the cage. Eyes carefully bouncing from child to child fall across the children, like lighthouses, moving back and forth searching for any signs of a potential problem.

Turning the crisp, pulped-paper pages, she assigns the characters in the book to people she’s met at Camp Able. With each turned page, Rose can imagine herself as Dorothy; the little farm girl lost in a faraway land. Dr. Valentine is Glinda, the good witch of the North. Glenda protects Dorothy from the all the evils in the world of Oz.

Private Tummons reminds her of the cowardly lion. Rose laughs audibly this time, she couldn’t help it and garners the attention of the green men. They let her outburst pass before they go back to whistling the tune that Hawthorne put inside their heads. They seem unsteady and drowsy, like drunks walking home after a long night at the bar.

The green men, she supposes, are like the flying monkeys, and like flying monkeys will obey Dr. Shaw, supporting whatever evil scheme he has in store for her and the other children.

Flying monkeys, she decides, can’t be trusted, but aren’t necessarily evil. They’re just slaves, and she’s just a prisoner, locked away in a dreary dungeon.

Dr. Shaw is the wicked witch, even though he’s a man. Can men can be witches? But, either way, it’s very true that his insides are vengeful, and twisted. The wicked witch wants to hurt her and the rest of the munchkins who live in Munchkin land, and Rose really doesn’t know why. It makes her sad not to be wanted or loved. Everyone deserves love. The closest thing she has to someone who cares about her is Dr. Valentine.

Library time comes to an end, but Rose hasn’t finished the book. She finds the thought of having to wait another week to finish it simply awful. She can’t wait that long, and be left to wonder, and worry about what happens to Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion. And poor, poor, Toto.

The guards aren’t looking in her direction. They’re joining the children from the first table up to the long line of the chain. So, without thinking it completely through, she takes the dog-eared book and stuffs it down through the neck-opening of her hospital gown and clenches it tightly under a sweaty armpit. She turns to discover that she’s been found out. Ivy is smiling at her with a big toothy smile that makes her feel ugly inside.

It’s strange, Ivy saw her take it but doesn’t tell on her. All the same, Rose feels guilty about taking what doesn’t belong to her. It’s wrong and decides to never take anything again… after this. Somewhere along the way, it was probably ingrained in her that stealing is wrong. She averts her eyes from Ivy’s pallid gaze and waits her turn to be shackled into a fitting occupancy somewhere along the chain. When her time comes, she’s jerked into place and tied in.

For the rest of the week, she reads portions of The Wizard of Oz, each night, before the generator powers down and the spiraling filament inside the light bulb goes out. She stuffs the little book under her mattress for safe keeping. She plans to return it, on the next library day. What will happen if the green men find the book hidden under the mattress? She doesn’t want to think about that. She’ll read it as fast as she can and then it’s back to the dusty place it occupied on the library shelf.

Rose wonders what it might feel like, what it would really feel like to have a friend like Toto. A little dog to cuddle each night, and to run with across wide-open farmland, and to go on amazing adventures with. Adventures no one in their right minds would ever believe. To have someone in her life who has the courage of a cowardly lion, or the heart and loyalty of a tin man.

Her life is barren of such friends. She falls asleep wondering if she could ever have fast friends like Dorothy. No, not me… she drifts to sleep. The little stars twinkle above the lonely child, like complacent sentinels.

Chapter Nine

“When you can’t look at the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark.”

-Alice in Wonderland

Dr. Merna Valentine furiously finishes her notes and catches up on the neglected charting, gone undone for days. She sits company with an empty coffee cup to wait out the lonely march of monotonous hours.

What are we learning? On an intuitive level, she’s aware her brain is subconsciously attempting to fill in blanks to puzzles and riddles because from time to time she gleans insight on snippets of questions, and confusing perplexities where the children are concerned. There are too many questions and not enough answers.

Merna’s office is in the old administration building, down the hall from Dr. Shaw’s office. She has been making notes on every child she’s been observing, for clues, for answers, for some possible resolution that will correct this nightmare, this end-of-the-world scenario of which she’s an unwilling contestant.

Her hand is cramping from the three and a half hours she’s been pushing a pencil. It’s dull tip plowing across a secondhand piece of scratch paper. She drops it and shakes her hand, forcing blood back into her fingers. She massages away acute acroparesthesia until the tingling slowly disappears leaving behind a slight but persistent cramp.

The charts from last night lay nearby, on a small table. She reaches for them, gathering them together, wrapping a rubber band around the stack. It’s time to discuss last night’s observation with Dr. Shaw.

She’s reluctant, but she stands up from her desk anyway. She feels she must force herself to leave her simple office, and creep down the hall to Shaw’s.

His office door is closed, but there’s some light squeezing out from under it. She knocks.

She calls softly, “Dr. Shaw.”

No answer.

“Dr. Shaw?”

She knocks again, lighter this time finding herself hoping that he’s not there, and there’s still no answer. She opens the door. She’s relieved to find his office empty, and she gets a sudden urge to snoop around. She feels like a child hunting for Christmas presents in her parents’ bedroom closet. Instead of closing the door completely, she leaves it ajar so she can make a quick exit, should anyone come this way.

A single chair, a metal desk, A yellow file cabinet, and a few rickety bookcases are all that decorate the room. It’s the epitome of military furnishing, Sparse, but functional. The minimalistic comforts of Camp Able have become something she has become used to. After all, what choice does a girl have, but to get used to it? It’s not like you can just stroll into a Woolworth’s or a Nordstrom’s these days without getting eaten down to the bone by the Turned.

It would be better to go before she does something she might regret. But before she can turn to leave, a pile of folders, covered partially with a flak jacket, catch her attention.

Curiosity guides her to them. Nervously she lifts the jacket and sits it aside. Lifting one folder, while watching the door, she listens for sound, but hearing nothing, she flips it open and studies the notes.

The folder contains chart on a boy named, Alder. A tear rolls down her cheek and falls to the musty carpeting. Her eyes redden her anger peaks and her nostrils flares. She can feel her head itch and grow hot, coinciding with the rise of her blood pressure.

She lifts another folder, and another, and another. Autopsies. Secrets and lies. She’s been giving Shaw everything, and all the while he’s been keeping secrets from her. Telling lies and misdirecting her. She has been searching for answers that might eventually save the children and help humanity recover from this calamity, and he’s been keeping everything from her. She knows now his only intent is to seek out a weakness and destroy them all.

Shaw, lying, all this time. How could she not have seen it? She wanted to believe him. As much of a struggle as its been. She made herself believe he was on her side. A joint venture to save the world. She asks herself, how can she have been so gullible, trusting everything he’s been saying to her. He never intended anything more than purging the planet of what he believes is an incurable curse.

She places the folders back where she found them, keeping one as proof. The gig is up. There’s enough evidence in this one folder. She doesn’t bother to cover them with the jacket, nor does she attempt to hide the fact she’d gone through them.

She rushes straightaway across the courtyard to the building where the surgical suites are located. Her face is flushed from the heat of the sun. Liar, the accusation repeats over and over in her head, liar, liar, liar. Her rage intensifies, she feels as if steam is coming from her ears. She envisions different ways she could cause injury to Shaw with each stalwart step she takes, small puffs of dust rising in her wake.

The operating room door is closed. It’s not heavy enough or thick enough to protect him from her. She blows past the two soldiers keeping guard and pushes through it like it’s made of chiffon. Her father would have called her a raging wildcat. She’s pumped full of piss and vinegar. Her adrenal glands pump adrenaline throughout her system.

She throws the folder in his face as she enters. A few loose leaves of paper fly out, floating to the floor like feathers, but the rest land and slide across the prep stand, filling the room with the sound of a nervous clatter. She glares into his eyes.

“I’ve given you everything. All my notes. All my observations, while you’ve been conniving, and planning, and weeding your way to your own selfish agenda. Pretending you were helping me all along. You secret-keeping piece of…”

“Now, now, that’s not very ladylike.” He’s turned away from her.

“You are a dirty, no-good excuse for a man. Do you have no morals? No ethics? What’s your plan?” she says.

She doesn’t expect an answer, and if she gets one, she’ll have to weed through more lies to get the bit of truth sandwiched within. It could take her weeks to find it. He’ll dodge her and deceive her all he can. It won’t matter she’s got his number, and she’s calling him on it.

He reaches for a towel, covering up the ugliness of what he’s been working on, hoping she hasn’t seen anything. It’s a piece of the riddle he chooses to keep to himself for as long as he can, but unfortunately, the limit of secrecy might have just been reached.

“You don’t want to save anyone, much less the children. You want them eradicated. Don’t you? Don’t you? Don’t You, damn it?” She’s asking him the questions at the end of a jabbing finger, but if he says anything she’ll be tempted to punch him square in the mouth, and if his teeth come out, the more that fly, the better.

She asks a question gnawing at the back of her mind. It’s been there for quite some time, but she’s never bothered to ask. “Why did you name them all after plants and trees?”

He’s obviously hiding things. She’s digging in, getting closer to the root of the deception. Her attention is drawn to the small body he was working on before she came into the room. He’s reluctant to show her, moving to hide something.

Without answering her allegations, he explains, “They are not names, they’re only labels. It’s the small traits and diminutive behaviors that I’ve witnessed over time. Things which reminded me of the behaviors of plant life. I’m no horticulturalist. And trust me when I say, I’m not up on parasitology. I was a small town general practitioner before everything went south. I think what I’ve just discovered will prove what these things are is both plant and parasite. You call them children. They are not children. You’re living your life; thick with guilt. You try to console yourself to sooth the sting of your tears. You’re trying to redeem yourself for what you did to daughter, and you’re angry. I understand completely. You feel you failed as a mother.”

She slaps Shaw so hard it turns his face away from her. He rubs the heat growing in the shape of her palm print away. She’s too hurt to say what she wants to say. It’s what I had to do for her. It was mercy. She hates the fact that she ever shared that part about her past with him, about Savannah, about that night.

Shaw lifts the towel, now saturated in blood and saline. Her hand flies to her face, to cover her mouth. It has fallen open with the shock of the dreadful sight before her.

“Your daughter would have recovered. You didn’t know it at the time, all the children were falling ill; just like your daughter. You feel guilt tearing at you. Believe me, I know. In time she would have recovered, but what you fail to accept is that what survived would have been something else entirely.”

Her approach to the table is deliberate, but gradual, walking as if her shoes are filled with lead. In awe, she witnesses what Shaw is revealing to her.

“I believe this is what they are. The thing inside, controlling them, and blessing them with random unearthly talents.”

Merna’s eyes are fixed on the squirming thing laying before them. It’s hard to convince herself that she’s looking at such an unbelievable and unimaginable sight as what she’s seeing.

It’s a small creature, squirming helplessly in a metal specimen pan. It bears a strong resemblance to plant-life with leaf-like skin and veins which cover its delicate form like vinery. It’s drowning in an odiferous broth of seedy-yellow fluid; an alien lifeform defying her understanding.

“Lily’s body eventually surrendered to the drugs I administered. It was a peaceful passing, within reason. But whatever this is… it’s resistant to every drug, every chemical, I’ve injected into it. I’ve even tried applying acid to its epidermis. So far, other than a little wilting of its… leaves, if you want to call them that, its biological makeup seems entirely unaffected by both toxic and caustic substances. Nothing I have available to me has any influence on it. I suspect the only way to euthanize it is to utterly destroy it. Fire should do the trick. I’m not sure though, and I’m not ready to try it yet. I want to run several more tests on it before it comes to that.”

Stunned and pale, Merna is still standing with her mouth gaping open. She’s shaking her head in denial. This creature could exist in a little child. She feels nauseous and chilled. Everything is moving in slow motion. She moves toward the vacant rolling stool, almost missing the seat and nearly falling to the floor before Shaw catches her.

“Where did you find it?” she says.

He reaches for a pair of bloody forceps to poke at the brain and maneuver it, so Dr. Valentine can observe, while he sets out to answer her question. “It hollowed out the interior of sweet little Lily’s brain. And here,” he directs her attention to a certain position on the brain, “the corpus callosum, for the most part, has been eaten away. The thing cleared out a nest and nuzzled down, here, just above the fornix, and sent these, uh, well, for lack of a better word… roots, I guess you might call them, into the cerebellum, midbrain, pituitary, medulla, and into the spinal cord respectively. There is something else which I think you might find very interesting. Let’s take a few of these ‘children,’ as you like to call them, out for some sun. Shall we? They haven’t had any for a very long time.” He replaces the blood-bogged towel over the parasite. They leave the operating room behind them, along with their understanding of the world as they once knew it.

Chapter Ten

“All cats are gray in the dark. And besides, her actions have less to do with her, and everything to do with you.”

-Jaye Frances, The Kure

Dr. Shaw arrives in East Wing with a Cheshire cat’s smile on his face, and Dr. Valentine in tow. She’s lost some of the golden-sand color from her skin, her affect is flat and her spirit, lethargic. Some unknown thing has dampened her front of strength. She has all the earmarks of a person who has just seen the vilest of phantoms.

Shaw is leading her by her elbow like an unruly toddler, and she lets him do it. Perhaps in his own way, he believes he’s helpful, escorting her like a regretful blind date. Or, perhaps it’s exactly what it seems, he’s nothing but overbearing. Yes, that’s far more likely.

Above all, one thing is certain, and that thing is that Dr. Valentine realizes she doesn’t like it and pulls her elbow out of his hand with an over-exaggerated jerking motion.

“I’m not comfortable with being led anywhere by you.” Her eyes drill into his.

Shaw’s smile fades.

Oh, that’s perfect. Is that embarrassment on his face? So, what if he’s offering me an olive branch now? Too little too late.

He says nothing to her. His smile fades.

There’s a reason she and Shaw are here, and she’ll be patient long enough to get some answers.

“Uh, Private, uh…,” Snapping his fingers as if it will help Shaw recall the private’s name.

“Tummons,” says the private, yawning widely, a mouthful of crooked teeth shine in the hallway lights before he makes eye contact and winks at Merna.

“Right, Tummons, right, of course, I knew that. I wish to collect two, no, no… make it three subjects.”

“Children.” Dr. Valentine corrects him. “Not subjects. Children.”

“Not children,” Shaw inserts. He corrects her under his breath, “subjects.”

The problem is she’s made it all too clear her fondness for Rose, and she knows he’ll use it to take little digs at her.

After what she’s experienced in the OR she’s not quite sure how she should feel about it either. But, every so minutely her original thought on the subject shifts back into place. These are children who were affected by something that no one understands. It wasn’t what they wanted. They’re just as much a victim of circumstance as every other survivor on the planet.

“Bring, Rose,” he says, looking for a pat on the back for acknowledging that the kid has a name, but he won’t get one from her.

She nods. Resigning her immediate concerns on the matter giving into curiosity. She knew he’d include Rose in whatever demonstration he has planned. She braced herself for it the best she could.

“And also, bring R – Zero – Four – E, and R – Zero – Six – E, to the main courtyard,” Shaw continues.

On these two, Merna agrees, Hawthorne and Ivy are both special cases. She hasn’t connected with them the same way she has with Rose.

Tummons shouts down the hall to another soldier who runs off to collect the children from their rooms.

Chapter Eleven

“Don’t judge someone by how they look, judge them by how many people they’ve harmed.”

-Carisma Sechrest

Something feels different. This is out of order, Rose can hear keys rattling in the corridor. Lab Work Day normally ends with an early day back to her room, and a chance to read more of The Wizard of Oz.

The keys on the big ring jingle. A green man throws her door open wide. He’s a big gawking man.

“What’s happening?” she asks. The man only stares at her with dark, beady eyes. She doesn’t like him, she decided it without giving him a chance, but she’s no fool. She can tell he doesn’t like her, just like the rest of the green men.

“Get your arse up,” he says. His accent is thick and as guttural as they come.

Rose has seen this green man before, and she knows how to get under his skin. She looks him right in the eyes. It makes him uncomfortable. She knows it, and that’s why she does it.

“Aye, aye, aye, aye aye. None of that lookin’ into meh eyes like that. Yeh gonna make me crazy, like a hornet in a bottle.” He jostles nervously from one foot to the other and back again like he’s barefoot on hot pavement. He pokes at her with his weapon. “I’m dead serious so, if yeh get yeh arse up, that’d be ripper.”

He has a bad temper. She’s seen it before, with the other children, and it’s never a good thing when they test him. There was this one time when he shoved Ivy so forcefully, it sent her rag-dolling across the floor.

He’s scared of Rose, and all the other children too; wet-your-church-pants scared. That’s why he acts out the way he does.

“Right-o. Out now. Yeh just be all apples and I won’ have to pop yeh head wide open, now will I? Ay? Ay?” He motions with his rifle for her to move through the doorway and out into the hall.

Once out of her room, she finds Hawthorne following her with his eyes. His expression is one of repugnance. What does he expect her to do, but follow directions?

Saying nothing she takes her place; standing in front of the boy just like during morning line-up. Now she’s certain that something wrong, because no one else is with Hawthorne, and usually the others are already lined up too. That and protocol isn’t being followed, and the green men didn’t bother to call out the Wayfinders. Ivy is the last to be collected from her room before they are marched to a place that Rose has never been before.

The green men take them to a side door. It’s reinforced, like the operating room door. The only difference being there are extra steel plates welded onto it.

They wait while Private Osbourne holds a rifle on them, pointed at their heads while another green man, one that Rose has never seen before, uses a big keyring and initiates a lengthy search for the key that will open the door.

“Cam on, Cam on. Open it already, mate,” urges the Australian soldier. “Marcia’s waiting for me, and I need to get over there before she cools down.”

“Don’t flip your wig, Ozzy,” says the key holder, and mutters something about, being dizzy with a dame, as continues to search for the key. When he finds it, he slips it into the lock and turns the key.

The lock is hesitant but grinds open with a bit of force. The door swings back. It claps hard against the courtyard wall, and a loud metal boom echoes through the corridor. Ivy gets the muzzle of the key holder’s rifle against her shoulder, and she moves forward and through the door.

A fierce light, far brighter than the little one hanging in Rose’s room, and far, far brighter than the ones where Dr. Shaw cuts up children when he wants to look inside them, causes her to blink her eyes, and they water with big salty crocodile tears. She feels dazed, but the feeling isn’t unpleasant. To the contrary it’s euphoric. She almost falls, but its as if the rays of the light catch and support her.

Rose is sandwiched between Hawthorne who is standing at her back and Ivy who leads the section of three. If it weren’t for Ivy pulling her along she wouldn’t be able to move at all.

As it is, Rose thinks that Ivy feels the same way she does, because the soldier with the keys has to push into Ivy’s spine with the muzzle, to get her to move. Hawthorne is dragging behind; she can feel his weight preventing her progression into the courtyard.

It’s hard to concentrate here in this place. Her head swims, but Rose manages to inspect her surroundings, as best she can muster under the circumstances. Her heart beats become erratic, and her rate of breathing quickens.

The small yard in which they’re corralled, is surrounded by tall fences with endless jumbles of wire around the tops and each coil thereof have pointy, triangular pieces of sharpened metal welded all throughout.

Rose chances a glance skyward searching for the source of the delightful, life-giving warmth beaming down on her. It’s coming from a yellow smudge way up in the sky. The sheer radiance of the thing forces her to squint and pushes her head down; her eyes water from the spectacle of it. What is it? She braces herself for the power of the golden star above and lifts her face again to confront the radiant disk She is doused in the golden, sweet rays of the Sun. Tingles and tickled creep along all her delicate skin. Energy swells deep within her and finds its way to every one of her fingers and toes. She imagines that tiny pinpoints of light flow from the ends of her hair.

Currents glide up and down her body, and she can concentrate on nothing else as she as she drinks in power. Her body is nourished by the yellow dwarf hanging from an invisible string. Her body is flooded by the release of human/alien hybrid growth hormone. Rose’s metabolism quickens, and her alien-occupied brain matures in leaps and bounds by the second. Her body seems light, as the weight of a raven’s feather, floating on the thermal updrafts of life and death.

The sensation isn’t like the time that Dr. Shaw gave her the medicine. It’s different because his medicine made her feel all heavy on the inside. It weighed her down and stapled her body to the gurney. No, now she imagines she can fly far away from here. Rose is very, very happy. As she had been the night, she sensed the rain.

Oh, only if she could fly away, but even if she could sprout wings and lift from the ground she could never leave the others. The overpowering feeling that she must care for them that they are family would prevent her from leaving. Her wings are clipped. She’ll never fly without the others. She can’t bring herself to imagine leaving the children behind. Ever.

Rose, Hawthorne, and Ivy stand chained to one another. Rose, only slightly aware of her surroundings, fading in and out of reality, perceives the others swaying as if they are stalks of corn blowing lazily in a gentle summer’s wind. And she sways too. Three small faces against the blue sky, like young birds in a nest, take in the power that the dark prison of Camp Able has drained from them.

The doctors, Shaw and Dr. Valentine, come into the courtyard with the soldiers and the children. They settle in for what promises to be a long, but interesting observation of the children’s reactions to the Sun.

One thing in particular that Dr. Valentine notices, not immediately because this particularly remarkable observation can be made only with the passing of some time, is that the children are purposefully tracking the sun.

She isn’t sure at first, perhaps it’s a minor shift in the stance the children take, as their inner ears collaborate with the remainder of their adolescent brains to maintain a delicate balance, as they sway to and fro. If one might come along now the children might appear as if they are listening to some music unheard by anyone else in all the world.

But as hours tick off, one by one, and the golden orb arcs from east to west, the children’s faces, now sunburned by solar radiation, follow it across. Their postures shift to absorb the abundant solar energy warming the Earth. Their bodies’ rock gently, their faces stay fixed to the sun. The children dance and swoon, nearly imperceptibly, hypnotic metronomes are they.

Merna marvels at their movements which sync in time with the heartbeat of the solar winds, a slow-motion ballet. She would rather write it off as a balancing mechanism that makes them rock in place like marionettes. And then she says, “They are just like… I don’t know… just like…,”

“Just like plants,” says Shaw.

“I’ve seen this. Well, not this, exactly. But a collective reaction to stimulus. Last night, during the storm. Not one, but all of them.”

“Subjects.” Shaw corrects her once more. He is unforgiving in his want, to beat this thought they these are innocents.

Dr. Valentine remains silent. She maintains her doctrine. These are children with a right to be freed from this terrible, terrible thing that’s happened to them. A small part of her wonders if they can ever be what they were ever again. The thing inside of them has scooped out what they used to be and has made them something entirely new. How could anyone come back from this? “They were all standing in front of the boards, reaching out for rain that they couldn’t see.”

“I made the same observations, weeks ago before you arrived. There’s a strong reaction and pull toward anything that would sustain plant-life.”

Bastard. A taste of rotten garbage slips past her tongue and dribbles into her throat. The sourness of the realization of his out-and-out betrayal scrapes her palate raw. Her cheeks flush, not from the sweltering heat, but rather her resurfacing anger towards him. Her blood pressure rises. Her ears go from pink to scarlet, bilaterally, across the scaphoid fossa and helix.

The sun sinks in the western sky, and as it does the hospital building which houses the children, casts a grey shadow, slowly skulks across the courtyard, inch by inch, caressing sand and pebbles as it goes until the intense evening light dims around Hawthorne, cloaking him in the colors of his inner spirit of greys and deep lavender-blue.

His swaying becomes mildly spasmodic, losing the smoothness of the swaying motion. His tilt from side to side slows in comparison to the other two children. Something is happening, but just what is not certain. Valentine senses a change coming over the boy. She surmises it must be being brought on by the casting of the shadow onto his body. He’s emerging from his pseudo-hypnotic state, of that, there’s no doubt. Lightly, he begins to whistle as he often does, softly at first, then the whistling grows steadily louder.

When the shadow falls across Rose, her sway becomes more animated, and Dr. Valentine can see that an area of her brain, the vestibulocerebellum is auto-correcting itself, so the child doesn’t fall. Amazing that the creature she saw laying on the table in the operating room, with all its digging and tunneling and hollowing out of the brain had left the hosts critical neuro functions intact. Of course, there was a plan all along. If it planned to use the host’s body, then it was only logical for it to keep areas of the brain intact that it would need to control it and keep it alive.

Rose’s sticky eyes flutter open, but she still isn’t completely lucid. She wakes confused and mumbling. She remembers being brought to the courtyard, and then her mind drifting away, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was helpless to the seduction to which she found herself subjected.

Hawthorne is whistling his tune somewhere behind her. The drowsiness is wearing off, but the sweeping energy is still present; the pleasure of it threatens to overwhelm her again, but she’ll resist its calling to her. The whispers and promises of fulfillment. She could bust from its presence in her, but at the same time, wants it to never end. Never find its way out of her body. How long it will last, she doesn’t have a clue.

There’s another person whistling… it’s started off slow, but gradually it picks up both tempo and pitch, to match Hawthorne. She has memorized Hawthorne’s tune, and the second whistler matches Hawthorne perfectly, note for note.

She searches for the source of the accompaniment, and there, outside the fenced courtyard, the green man who always seems to find Hawthorne’s tune so infectious. He is performing maintenance on a jeep. The hood is propped open, and he’s hanging over the radiator so that he can see way down into the engine.

The man wipes the sweat of a long, hard day from his gritty neck with a greasy, green rag. The rumble of a vehicle grows closer. Rose pays it no mind. She fights to keep her eyes open.

She focuses on the whistling green man who stares off into space, lost in deep thought, ill-focused and disoriented.

The shadow is now falling across Ivy, and the girl is swaying from front to back, bumping into Rose occasionally. She is waking too. Rose is aware that Dr. Shaw, Valentine and the green men are in the enclosure along with them, but for some reason that she can’t understand, she feels an undesirable omen is lingering over them all; a foreboding sense of doom. A thin invisible tendril connects Hawthorne to the whistling green man’s mind.

Rose heard Dr. Shaw asking the green men to return the subjects to their cells. That’s a funny word, cell, but that is exactly what it is. Not her room, with the little light hanging from her ceiling with the Milky Way encircling it, but a cell. She’s a prisoner, she does not belong here, and she doesn’t like it at all. But she will stay here with the other children because they belong together, wherever they are.

Rose watches the whistling green man walk in a stagger, encircling the jeep, he approaches the passenger side. He reaches in and pulls out a bayonet. He draws its blade from a hard-cased sheath. The blade makes a scraping sound against the hard casing.

Private Osbourne is coming to lead them back inside. Rose doesn’t move, even a little, when Ivy tugs on the cable to lead the way back into the hospital. She’s too enthralled by the whistling green man’s actions, He lifts the bayonet directly in front of his unshaven face. He admires the bayonet as if it’s a beautifully sculptured idol. His eyes tear. His lips pucker. He whistles. Mirroring Hawthorne’s tune exactly, note for note, inhaling and blowing through dry, pursed lips and plunges the bayonet into his abdomen. The blade, bloodied, is withdrawn from his protruding guts and the driven into his side. The man’s face doesn’t show the least bit of pain. It’s not registering as pain. He is numb to the self-induced violence and continues to whistle while he carves great holes into his weakening body. Blood spurts and sprays the ground where it soaks into the dirt. Stabbing and stabbing himself, over, and over again.

Other green men come to life in response to what’s happening. The approach the man, to stop him, to render aid to him, but before they can get to him, they, each, in turn, stop dead in their tracks and whistle too. They’ve become a macabre choir acting as one, and the conductor of death is a little boy. Hawthorne has them all under his influence. His mind has taken their individual will away and has replaced their need to self-preserve with suicidal intent.

One of the green men climbs a ladder leading up to a water tower. Another draws his service revolver and tries to put a bullet smack dab into the center of his brain, but he overshoots, the power of the weapon comes out the other side of his head, hitting someone in the shoulder. The green man who’s climbed the tower reaches the top and throws herself to her death as if the act itself is effortless. Her neck breaks with a wet snap where she lands.

Not all the green men are acting under falling victim to Hawthorne, only those who have come to help the whistling man. There’s a sphere of influence surrounding the man, instantly affects anyone who steps into it.

Dr. Valentine and Dr. Shaw, horrified at this awful thing taking place, and both are backing away from the three children grouped in the yard, so they don’t get caught up in it too.

Private Osbourne and his companion in the courtyard are shouting at their comrades through the diamond-shaped holes in the fence, trying to stop them from acting in such a grisly manner. They’re shouting out to others to go and help, but then, they quit shouting, and together they drop their weapons to the ground. Hawthorne has them under his control too. The guards grip the fence and bash their heads against the support-posts repeatedly. The grate their faces across the galvanized chain link panels. Their faces are soon reduced to the consistency of ground meat in record time.

Ivy smiles at what carnage her brother has created. She resembles a feral animal drooling over the kill. Rose spins around. Her intent is to do what she can to make Hawthorne end the bloodshed, but before she can do anything at all, a shot echoes throughout the base and a sticky spout of blood sprays her directly in the face.

A bullet has pierced flesh and bone, and Hawthorne’s head cracks open like a thin-shelled egg. The metallic smell of fear permeates the air. Rose is familiar with it. There is always a hint of it carried on the air and permeating the uniforms of the green men. It coats the inside of her nares. The odor is robust, and hangs in the air like fog, concealed from her eyes, only registering on her sense of smell and taste.

Ivy, in shock by what has happened to her brother, screams at the very top of her lungs. The nature of the scream is unearthly. It’s so loud that it’s painful. All over Camp Able, people hurry to cover ears, struggling to protect the thin tympanic membranes from Ivy’s sonic bombardment.

Noses dribble blood in response to the change in atmospheric pressure that the sound is creating. Faces of the men and women here demonstrate clearly, the indescribable pain that Ivy’s scream is inflicting.

Rose has covered her ears instinctually but lowers her hands. Ivy’s wailing isn’t affecting her in the same way that it’s affecting everyone else. Forcefully, she takes Ivy’s hands in hers, in desperation she shakes her, but it doesn’t make her stop screaming. Nothing makes her stop. She shakes Ivy harder, still no effect. Ivy’s wail is a continuous assault. Doctors Valentine and Shaw have fallen to their knees and are covering their heads with their arms as if they’re being physically beaten. Rose is screaming, pleading for Ivy to stop, and then silence, but only because Ivy is drawing in another deep breath, so she can cry out again. In that moment of short, but blessed ringing-silence, a second shot splits the terror down the middle. Ivy falls to the ground, exhaling her final breath from her lungs.

Rose is sticky with the blood of the dead brother and sister. She stands motionless, in the courtyard, still holding onto Ivy’s lifeless hand. She locks eyes, filled with anger, on the man who had just murdered two of her kind. He’s kneeling next to an old bomb service truck, his handgun aimed, and his sights are glued on her. The little hairs stand up on the back of her neck, and a cold ripple of horror trickles down her spine. She knows that she’s the man’s next target.

Dr. Valentine staggers across the courtyard, wiping the blood from her nose, she’s shouting urgently. Rose stands her ground, looking death-daggers at the assassin with the gun. Dr. Valentine rushes to stand in front of her, waving her arms in the air, and saying, “No, Major Connors. No! She was trying to stop it! Please, don’t shoot her!”

It seems like forever before Connors grudgingly lowers his sidearm and casts a stare so intense that Rose can feel its invisible punch. He gives orders for the body of a man named, White Deer, who had succumbed to his injuries and burns to be taken to the morgue.

Hollander steps out from the driver’s seat and assists in attending to the injured and dying men.

“Shaw, Valentine, my office, one hour!” says Connors, who also goes to the aid of the fallen.

Chapter Twelve

“We’d stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You’d think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn’t.”

-Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

Connors’s office is centrally located, next to the parade grounds. The office once belonged to the base commander, Bantam was his name, A dusty name-plate still sits on the desk, bearing his name.

Bantam had been forced into early retirement by a Grub. The thing had buried itself near a latrine, this was the story he’d heard from some of his men. What a crappy way to go. Literally. Either way, the office was vacant, so he assumed command, and moved right in after he arrived from California. The officer in command at the time was relieved in more ways than one, not wanting to shoulder the weight of leadership, happily turned the base over to him.

He can feel his insides begin to quiver as adrenaline peters away, and he thinks about how the world has changed, how many men have died under his command, since Los Angeles.

No one could have possibly foreseen such a thing happening. The object which flew into our atmosphere and settled above the Los Angeles skyline changed everything in the wink of an eye. The spaceship sent humanity sprawling headfirst into a race for its existence.

During the first days following the disaster, Dr. Valentine had said she’d seen a crack open in the bottom of it. Something must have leaked out, wreaking destruction on a scale never before witnessed by human beings; an extinction event.

Connors isn’t for certain, but he has reason enough to believe the whole world was thrown through the windshield when this thing whatever it was stomped on the brake pedal. He and a few others rode the crest of the wave leaving L.A. which carried death along with it. He saw the rapidity of the change, the mutations of souls, now lost. He saw it in the towns and cities as the people turned into bloodthirsty savages. How bad this all is, how widespread, nobody truly knows. It could be worldwide, it could just be contained to the United States.

The night he and his ragtag convoy left Fort Irwin in Barstow, California, the countryside was crawling with the Turned. Every street, every field, everywhere… just crawling with those things. And those who hadn’t transformed, into sideshow freaks were either in the process of transforming or being dispatched by unspeakable post-human monsters.

The hellishness of what they can do is frightening, and it’s growing more powerful every day. What was that old saying? Connors thinks hard, pushing his memory to recall it… yes. He opens a desk drawer and searches a small, leather-bound book for what he seeks. Someone, most certainly, Bantam, had stashed it for safe keeping. He finds what he’s looking for, nestled right up next to a half-full bottle of scotch. He flips through the pages, and runs his finger along the printing, smudging the lines of dark ink as he goes, making faint trailing smudges across delicate, gold-gilded pages.

He reads to himself, Exodus 22:18 KJV. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. And had it not been for Merna Valentine jumping in front of that thing in the courtyard, he would have laid her brains out, right along with those other two. He would have sent the thing on a one-way elevator ride, to the front door of Hell.

Dr. Valentine was shouting something during the attack. Was there any truth to it, or was she only trying to save the thing? Was the kid trying to stop the other from screaming like a banshee? Unbelievable. How could the kid howl like that? He tugs on his thick earlobes with his fingers. Between today’s weapons fire and the Queen of the Damned, singing her swan song, he calculated how much hearing he has lost.

Someone knocks hesitantly at his door, and he calls out in response, “Come.” He slides the book back into the drawer, caressing the dusty bottle beside it with his fingertips, feeling the velvet smooth cover slide across them, before pushing the drawer closed. He rubs his fingers together to sanding away the dust.

“You wanted to see us, Major?” says Shaw.

Dr. Valentine files in behind him. Her face is pale. She’s psychologically fatigued by the day’s events; in the operating room and the courtyard. She swallows hard, her throat bulging slightly. She could sleep for a thousand years, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

Connors rubs his face with his rough hands, and squeezes his cleft chin, pinching it tightly, feeling several days-worth of stubble poke his palm. “Sit down.” chair squeaks and pops as it pivots. He says he wants some answers, and he wants them right now. He’s pointing to where the courtyard should be if he could see it clearly through the cheap, wood-paneled walls.

Dr. Valentine erupts, “He’s been keeping things from me.” She points a damning finger at her rival. “All of his research about the children. He’s been running his own experiments and keeping his finding from me… from all of us. He has no intention of saving them.”

“Those things are not children. They’re only pretending to be children… just enough to disarm you, confuse you, and then murder you. They most certainly are not children,” says Connors. His spittle flies from his mouth as he shouts in her face.

Shaw grins. He’s satisfied by the Major’s retort. He lowers his head and covers his mouth to hide his satisfaction.

Valentine, looking defeated, reiterates, “He’s been keeping vital information that we need. Information which could help us put an end to all this.”

The major shoots a questioning look towards Shaw.

“By putting an end to all this, Dr. Valentine means to find a cure for the research subjects. She believes they’re an unfortunate bunch of kiddos, and they’re being affected by a curable affliction, and this isn’t the case, Major, I assure you,” Shaw says.

“Oh, no, no, no, no,” agrees Connors, shaking his head and waving his index finger in the air before him, “What I just saw out there was cold-hearted, inhuman, twisted, and calculated. These… whatever they are… cannot be saved with medicines, or scientific mumbo jumbo. Nothing can pull those things back from the precipice. They are lost.”

“Shaw wants to kill them all… not just the Turned, but the children too, all of them!” Valentine says, almost as if she’s pleading for the major’s help. And she is.

Connors saunters to the window, spreading dust-caked curtains, he stares out, and says nothing, before stroking his face, from forehead to chin with both palms. “And he should. We should. I approve. His actions justify the means to an end. They need to all die, and the sooner, the better.

Shaw steps forward, speaking in defense of keeping the subjects alive, for now, long enough to find a solution to wiping out evil in one fell swoop. “Major, we can’t euthanize them right now. They need to be studied further. We must develop a weapon that can deal with the issue at hand, on a grand scale, once and for all.”

Shaw brings Connors up to speed on the parasite he found burrowed into Lily’s brain, looking all the world like a cabbage with legs. “It’s certainly the very same creature that most likely resides inside the braincase of all the subjects, of that I have zero doubt. It’s an alien lifeform for Christ’s sake. Can you believe it?”

Dr. Valentine has found a chair, and she’s draped over it looking nauseous and tossing, Shaw nasty stares while he babbles.

“I don’t know how to destroy it. I mean sure, I can eventually kill it, I’m sure, but not all of them, and not all at once, and that’s the goal. Taking those things out of commission one at a time isn’t at all effective nor is it efficient. No, what we need is someone who knows something about parasites or, God, I don’t know… plants. A Horticulturalist perhaps. Then maybe we might have a chance to gain the upper hand and set things right.”

Connors calls, over his radio, and a few moments later a soldier jogs into the office. “Get over to communications and tell, Airwave, to send out a call to any active base. We are looking for a…” Connors snaps his fingers at, Shaw.

“Parasitologist,” says Shaw.

“…or… a…,” Connors snaps again.

“Horticulturalist,” says Shaw.

Connors lifts his eyes towards Shaw. Getting a nod from the man, he sends the soldier off to deliver the order.

Dr. Valentine remains quite defiant, her arms crossed. She’s scowling, dejected, and furious. Shaw is puffed up like a toad and beaming like a kid on Christmas day.

He reaches into his pack to withdraw the specimen container. What he’s collected from the parking garage is still packed safely inside. He places it on the desk. “What do you make of these?”

“Is that? Is that what I think they are?” Dr. Valentine asks.

“Oh my god. Those are,” Shaw’s expression is one of confusion and disbelief, “those are eggs.” He takes the jar from the desk, turning it in his hand so that the blackened shells clunk against the inside gently.

“What are these from?” says Dr. Valentine, as much in awe as Shaw.

“A Wicked Briar. Did you know they could do this?” says Connors.

Shaw shakes his head, no.

Dr. Valentine takes the jar from him and inspects the contents carefully. “They’re dead.” She opens the lid and pokes one of the eggs with a pencil tip. It breaks apart like ash.

Shaw looks disappointed. Maybe he was hoping he could have hatched one. “They’re trying to create offspring. I’ve never seen any Turned do this before. This is completely new, but not entirely unexpected.”

Dr. Valentine, placing the lid back on the jar, gives it a little shake, and the rest of the contents turn to a pile of black dust and settle on the bottom. “Lucky for us looks like something’s gone wrong, at least with the clutch.”

“This was just a few of what it had,” Connors says, “There were hundreds just like these. All black and dried up.”

“let’s hope they don’t perfect the art of breeding,” says Dr. Valentine.

“Doctor Shaw, I’d like to take a gander at what you found in that brain. I want to see it, right now.”

Chapter Thirteen

“Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.”

-Alfonso X, King of Castile

The call’s gone out from Camp Able, as Major Connors ordered, to any base that’s still communications capable.

Camp Able, over the years, has lost contact from Camp Kane, in San Marcos, Texas; Camp Able’s sister camp. Camp Kane had been overrun and gutted by the Turned. Forty-seven fighting men and women. Nothing left but their skins hanging and drying like leather, from the ramparts, waving in the wind, like flags of defeat.

At one-time transmissions were sent back and forth from Kane and Able, nearly every day. Kane was meant to be a temporary base, originally set up as an evac point That was earlier, when the first death rattles of the world first began to ooze from the open cracks of the Earth. Kane, like Able, had been a home for soldiers and refugees alike.

Besides, Camp Kane, nobody knows how many bases are still in operation. That insignificant base might as well be located on the surface of the moon. Gone are the days when Kane responded to Camp Able’s transmissions, and except for a faint, static-laden signal the air’s been transmission free.

Some believe the defenses of Kane’s walls have been lofted ever higher since those first days, and if there’s anyone still alive there, then the gates are barricaded, self-survival becoming the trend.

The call Airwave placed a few short hours ago was different, because it triggered a response. But Kane had no one on base who studied parasites; Earth-born, or otherwise. And as it turned out Kane’s doctor had his hands full fighting off a severe sickness infecting the base. The radio operator made it clear that outside contact was unwelcome but promised to relay Able’s request down the pipe.

Nothing more than white noise hissed through the lonely speaker for days, until a disconnected whisper grows into a coherent string of information. Airwave, glued to a metal folding chair, frantically makes notes, taking them down in shorthand. He sometimes talks to himself and sometimes answers himself and sometimes tells himself jokes, only he laughs at. He’s been manning the radio in a lonely little boot devoid of quality human interaction for too long.

The pasty-skinned man nearly chokes on a hard biscuit. Washing down the lodge lump of dough with cold coffee, he sputters and responds to the message. Licking away the taste of bitter caffeine from his lips, he runs across the yard and the parade grounds, looking all the world like a chicken running for cover, before the major notices him, and moves to engage him, head on.

“Report, private,” says Connors. There is excitement on the young man’s face, and his body language shows something is brewing. Connors can feel the anxiety tightening his chest.

Out of breath, Airwave inhales deeply and tries again to talk, but he’s too winded. Instead, he hands the major the message.

Connors reads it silently to himself. His lips move silently as he scans each line. He crumbles the sheet of paper in his fist and hands the balled-up note to Airwave. “Thank you, that will be all, private.”

Weapons fire. The Connors and Airwave instinctively fall to the ground, where their reflexes drive them. Both place their dominant hands on their side arms and draw them.

The shots are coming from the southern entrance of the base. Another round of mixed-arms fire, followed by random shouting, raise Major Connors’s hackles. The weapon fire ceases, and he believes whatever transpired over at the south entrance has been taken care of. Until a steady eruption of gunpowder rises near the south gate in pale grey clouds of burning stink.

Men are running in every direction. A soldier stumbles around the corner of a steel-sided outbuilding. Catching sight of the major, he shouts, “Wicked Briars… the south gate.” He’s using his hands to wave Connors toward the south gate. The soldier is frantic. His movements are over-animated, a tell-tale sign that the man has probably soiled his fatigues.

Connors rallies men to the south gate, with raucous calls for support. At breakneck speed, he runs toward the fray, catching himself before he stumbles and falls over his tired feet.

More shooting, this time from the western side of the base. This stops the major in his tracks. The enemy is encroaching on two sides of the base. This is no coincidence. This is a planned maneuver. The Turned have shown up for a battle in impressive numbers. The perimeter of the camp is crawling with monsters.

Wicked Briars close in on the fortification and tear away at the walls, post by post, brick, by brick, and fence panel by fence panel, but soon, seeing that this is far too much work resort to vomiting acid. The goo the beasts spout onto the thick fences causes them melt, like silver wax placed too close to a flickering flame, dripping to the ground in steaming pools of heated slag.

A pack of what some of the enlisted men call Hobbles; oddly random variations of half-human, half-beast, scamper purposefully on their path through the lines of Wicked Briars. You don’t see many Hobbles. They are few and far between, easy to pick off, and more of a hindrance than an actual threat unless they get you down. Then it’s curtains for you. The things weave through the Wicked Briars like hunting foxes through tall grass, sleek and graceful, but blood-thirsty and skillful in the kill. They are hungry and salivate, foaming at the thought of gnawing Man flesh to the bone and deep into the marrow within.

Fight as they do, the soldiers are hopeless to match the sheer numbers near indomitability of the enemy foe. Airwave is lost to a blast of acid splashing over a wall. It came from nowhere. Connors barely missed being doused in the flesh-melting concoction.

Connors could hear the cries and random shouting all over the base, but one catches his attention.

“Major!”

It’s Hollander. “The base is lost. We’ve to get the hell out of here.”

The major cries out to the closest tower to sound the evacuation signal. The base has been overtaken. Hollander is correct; to stay and fight would be folly.

An errant shell is lobbed intended for a matter of great lethality but goes astray. The two men dive for cover, covering their heads from the noise and explosion to come. It spears the hospital building rending it open, directly down the center, like a butchered cow. The principal portion of the structure is destroyed, most notably, the cells of research subjects. Smoldering chunks of the building lay in pyramids of dust-shrouded rocks. Dust billows in fluffed curtains of brown and gray ash, choking out the sunlight. Calls and cries well up, and outward, from the broken wreckage and tangles of demolished inner-structure.

Dr. Valentine clears away the tangles of clotted wire, and shards of concrete, from where they have been strewn around the remains of the hospital. More than a few of the children have been killed by the falling debris. Tiny bodies lay twisted and dispersed across a wide area.

“Rose!” Dr. Valentine calls, “Rose!”

She throws planks of wood and debris out of her path. She spots movement to her left. A small hand. She reaches down to grab the small, blood splattered hand. It’s clawing out aimlessly. The palm is coated with small silvery hairs dotted on the ends with cloudy, yellow fluid.

“Stop! Valentine!” A muffled and raspy voice calls out, barely reaching her in all the uproar.

She takes notice just in time. It’s amazing that he caught her attention at all. She scans the debris until she finds the little hand again, poking out at her. And it’s clear to her, it’s not Rose’s hand, but the hand of another child. Nettle’s hands are a symbolic prelude to a painful and potentially deadly sting. She shudders. She’s the only child with this ability that Dr. Valentine knows of, thank God. She would have to be more careful, now that all the safety measures have been undone. She almost bought the farm, but there’s no time to be embarrassed for being so stupid.

“Nettle, it’s me, Dr. Valentine I’ll help you,” she says.

She shoves herself against a solid block of concrete, but the portion of the wall that is pinning the girl down is much too heavy for her to lift. She calls to a soldier as he’s running past. She calls to him for assistance, but he’s much too busy pissing himself to lend a hand, and he keeps right on running to wherever he was going before she called to him.

A long pipe lies not far from her. She collects it. Even though it’s kinked and warped, it’s the straightest, longest piece she can find. There’re plenty of concrete blocks scattered around to serve as a fulcrum.

After she rolls a large stone into place. A muscle in her lower back screams out in agony. She forces one end of the pipe under the wall and pulls downward. The busted wall, pinning Nettle beneath it, budges a little, but she can’t hold for very long. She’s not strong enough, and she’s soon forced to lower it back to the ground. She does it as slowly as she can so as not to crush Nettle’s skinny body beneath it.

Sweat pours from her filthy, grime-sheathed face. Her breaths come in groans and gasps. She’s mumbling to herself about how she can’t help the thing tramped under the rubble. Why had she said the “thing,” of course, she’s a child. That’s what she meant. She’s trying to fight away the thought that trying to free Nettle is hopeless. But she’s right, she can’t do it alone. She tries to lift it again, but she hemorrhages strength, and her will falters.

Something grabs her by the shoulder and pulls her violently away from where she’s standing. Times up. The wicked Briars have found me. Terrified her eyes move up to look death in its triumphant face, but finds only Shaw’s blue, bloodshot eyes drilling into her.

“Please, help me.” She stumbles, losing her grip on the pipe. Her waning strength makes her feel awkward and displaced and dizzy.

Shaw needs not to be asked again. The answer he’s been desperate to find most likely resides inside the heads of the subjects, of which not many have survived the collapse of the building. If they’re leaving Camp Able, at least one of these abominations must be brought along with them. He pries with the lever, and the wall raises, much higher than when Dr. Valentine tried to lift it.

Dr. Valentine scrambles part-way under the wall so she can reach Nettle, carefully avoiding a touch from her hands, she grabs the child’s hospital gown and drags her out from underneath.

Shaw lowers the back-breaking burden that he’s struggling to hold. It crashes down quickly. Nettle’s feet barely clear the heavy, bone-breaking block. A cloud of this dust thickens the air as the ruins settle.

“Here, quick, wrap her hands up in this,” says Shaw. He throws Dr. Valentine a handkerchief from his pocket, and a discarded oil rag he picks up from the debris field. He tells her to wrap those hands good and tight and do be extra careful doing it.

A small voice is calling to her. It’s a hoarse, choking whisper, coming from a cascading mountain of rock and smoldering, splintered furniture.

“Rose! She’s there,” Dr. Valentine points to the pile of wreckage she thinks is where the child called to her from. “Oh, God, She’s alive. Help me.”

“We have all we need,” says Shaw. “Just the one… We have to get out of here.”

“No!” says Dr. Valentine, already trying to get to Rose. “We aren’t leaving her to die here. We aren’t going to do that!”

Shaw bends down to speak to Nettle and warns her not to try anything stupid, “Stay here and don’t you dare move. Do you understand? If you move, you’re as good as dead.”

Nettle, other than bloody and dirty, appears unshaken or seriously injured, and if Shaw didn’t know any better, she’d look as normal as any seven-year-old could. She nods her head, confirming that she’ll stay where she is and not try anything stupid.

“You’re dumber than I give you credit for. Look around you. If we don’t get out of here, we’re dead.” His words aren’t stopping Dr. Valentine from moving the pile of concrete from where she’s trying to dig out, R – Zero – Five – E. He takes up the pry-pole again and shakes away his impatience. “This is the last one I’m helping to save, and then I’m leaving with or without you. And, I’m taking that one,” he points to Nettle.

Rose’s hands are bruised scraped. She’s reaching out from under a great wooden beam pockmarked with rusty nails, pleading for help. The concrete avalanche and wood cover the rest of her body, concealing it from view.

Dr. Valentine keels down, on her knees, to hold her hands. Shaw warns her to be careful and not to touch her. She doesn’t care what he has to say, she’ll do as she pleases, even though she knows he’s right. Skin-to-skin contact is forbidden, unless under the strictest scientific standards in a controlled environment, and under the watchful eye of an armed guard. All of which all in the process of trying to avoid death.

“I have to pull her out when you lift with the pole. Now shut up and lift already,” says Dr. Valentine.

The Hobbles are doing what they do best and living up to their namesake. The squat creatures, looking all the world like long-legged devil crabs, with human eyes of every color, placed on stumpy eye-stalks, are loping after fleeing soldiers, grabbing them around the legs and tying them up, with a stringy substance which they exude from spinnerets near there rear ends, so that the Wicked Briars can more easily dispatch them.

They’re getting closer. Dr. Valentine can tell it, without having to see it. The screams of the men and women prove the Turned are drawing ever nearer. She grabs onto Rose’s wrists, ready to pull her free, she takes an opportunity to look over her shoulder. Yes, they are getting close. A group of five Wicked Briars is barreling down on them from multiple directions. Zeroing in on their frantic activity to save Nettle and Rose.

“Nettle come stand closer to us.” Says Shaw. “Hurry, Merna. We don’t have much time.” He groans under the weight of the wood beam pinning Rose down. The bulk of the pile is bending the pole in the middle, where it was kinked during the explosion. He readjusts his grip and pushes downward with everything he has left in him.

“I have her.”

There’s nowhere to go. The avenues of escape have been closed. Rampaging, Wicked Briars, joined by smaller Hobbles are so close the smell of acidic puke dripping from chomping jaws is overpowering.

Moments from death, they position themselves and wait for the pain of a terrible death. Rose buries her face into Dr. Valentine’s side. She too knows what’s coming.

Shaw picks up the pole to fight but realizing it is hopeless and drops it with a flat-keyed clang to the rock-strewn ground.

A truck screeches to a stop directly in front of them, cutting off the advancing enemy. It’s an old military ambulance with the name, Flying Fish, painted crudely on the side, in white paint. Gun slots perforate the exterior, and out of those ports, soldiers are shooting at the vile stampede, coming like a rushing wall of ugly.

The back doors of the ambulance fly open and Major Connors tells Shaw and Valentine in no uncertain terms to get inside the ambulance fast, but to leave them, meaning Rose and Nettle. He is aiming his pistol at Nettle’s ringlet-covered head, daring her to take advantage of the situation.

“Don’t say that. We have to take them. They’ll die here,” says Dr. Valentine.

“These subjects are the only chance we have of winning the battle with the Turned,” says Shaw.

Rose pulls on Dr. Valentine’s arm. “We have to save the others,” Rose is pointing back to the part of the hospital that’s still standing. She knows the other children are in still inside.

Dr. Valentine looks back to the shattered building, and then down to Rose. The look in her eyes should be enough to tell Rose that they can’t help the others. “Hopefully, we can come back for them… later,” she says. Her words ringing false.

“They’re just kids,” says Rose again, refusing to give in. Trying frantically to pull away from Dr. Valentine’s grip. “They’re just kids.” Tears flow down her face.

The weapons firing from the Flying Fish’s portholes is increasing. A soldier from inside warns that the Wicked Briars are nearly on top of them. Connors allows Shaw and Valentine inside along with the monsters, wearing child-costumes, but only because there is no time left to banter it back and forth.

“Get us out of here, Hollander!” Connors says to Hollander who is in the driver’s seat. “GO! GO! Floor it.”

The Flying Fish bursts through a barricade at break-neck speed. The guard posted there is dead. The remainder of his mangled body is dispersed indiscriminately throughout the immediate area. Two trucks follow the Flying Fish, as it makes its escape through the North entrance, and speeds away from the fallen base. Many soldiers have left behind. They’ll either escape or be digested within the guts devils.

They travel several miles, over rough road, before they’re no longer being chased by the invaders. Everyone has been so quiet since fleeing the base that it’s startling when the driver speaks out.

“Where are we heading?” says Hollander.

Connors hasn’t taken his eyes of the children, still holding his pistol to Nettle’s head. “Wrap her hands up in this stuff. The thin handkerchief and the dirty, frayed rag isn’t going to be enough. He hands Shaw some bandages and tape he gets from a med-bag on the floor.

Dr. Valentine watches him intently as he ponders his next move carefully because his next decision could be the one that gets them all killed. She’s surprised to hear his decision. “Fort Worth.”

“Why Fort Worth, Major?” she asks.

“Because they contacted us right before we were attacked. They’ve got someone there that may be able to help with your research. I wasn’t going to tell you. We weren’t going to go. Too far. But now, it seems as good a place as any, since the base has been lost.”

Dr. Valentine sits on a cot and leans against the panel. She watches the world pass by in a blur it’s become desolate a desolate battlefield, painted by the brush of a demented mad-mad, the colors taken from a palette of greys, and blacks, and reds. The mad painter has skillfully captured the spirit of what’s left of the world and has put it all down on a canvass of futility.

Shaw places a final layer of gauze over Nettle’s hands and tapes it all down snug.

Valentine’s not sure what disgusts her more; the destruction and loss she witnessed back at Camp Able, or the shit-eating grin on Shaw’s face.

Chapter Fourteen

“Okay Sweetie, monsters are real, and they look like people…”

-Mobeen Hakeem

The laborious journey across Texas, from Brownsville to San Antonio, can be described as nothing short of agony. The roads have despised their company and given them great pains, and hateful jabs in the ribs, at every opportunity.

Highway 77 isn’t too bad to travel on, but it isn’t good either. Abandoned automobiles litter the long silent stretch of road, some burned out, some still with corpses inside, decomposing in the sun.

Three, rag-tag, vehicles managed to escape the ruin of Camp Able, but one; a big one that carried a lot of green men, broke down just outside of San Antonio, in a place called Southton.

Rose heard the driver of the truck say what the problem was, and the problem was that it’s “flat busted.” They couldn’t fix it, and so they had to leave it sitting on Highway 37, to rust along the side of the road.  So, all of it means, a lot of the green men are now on foot. This makes the convoy move much slower than Major Connors’s cares for, but as he says, “It is what it is.” The Major intends to acquire a new truck as soon as possible, but “first thing’s first,” says the major, “We need a safe place to call home for the night.”

Rose has hardly moved at all, from her place beside Dr. Valentine. She stares out the window, next to her. Rose doesn’t think she’s ever seen so many dead people in one place, as there are here in San Antonio, but her amnesia hasn’t really gotten any better, so she really doesn’t know if she’s ever seen this many dead people, or not. Putrid bodies litter roadways and sidewalks, like fallen leaves, and dried corn husks. They’ve been laying there a long time.

Rose’s legs ache from being cooped up in the Flying Fish, for so long. She wonders if she’s forgotten how to walk or talk, because she hasn’t been able to move around, and she’s had to remain so quiet for so long. Everyone is keeping as far away from Nettle as possible. The girl stays huddled in a tight ball and packed into a gloomy corner of the old military ambulance. She wraps her arms around her and rocks back and forth, jerkily, like a broken rocking horse.

Nettle’s hands are still wrapped tightly in wads of field dressing, and at least an entire roll of tape covers each one. Everyone still moves carefully gingerly about the girl, frightened and respectful of her unique touch, which is strange because Nettle’s hands are wrapped up in so much bandage that she couldn’t touch anyone even if she wanted. She wonders if she’d be immune to Nettle’s touch in the same way she’d been unaffected by Ivy’s scream.

Finally… the ambulance stops moving, and to Rose’s great relief the doors float open. Scorching, but welcome, air, tainted will the smell of old death fills the interior of the ambulance, and lingers about, awhile.

Rose hops onto a cobblestone courtyard. Several of the green men move quickly to secure the area, including the inside of an old brown building, a centerpiece in the area. She’s unsure of the structure’s intended purpose, but no matter, she likes the look of it anyway. An old sign nearby says, “ALAMO.”

For the first time in days, there’re no shots fired. No commotion and no excitement, but the green men remove nine human bodies from the Alamo. She overhears Connors saying that those nine people may have taken their own lives, and except for those two, he points at her and Nettle, there are no other signs of Turned.

Except for the green men speaking amongst themselves, in hushed and worried voices, the first night in the Alamo is quiet, but the men believe there’s something stirring in the darkness of the old courtyard. Something slithering between the fabric which parts the shadow from the light, and at times in the early morning, ghostly-sheer, shadows jostle along the crevices of the buildings dotting the area.

The next morning comes, and everyone is exhausted because no one slept very well at all. The large front door is thrown open and the cool and golden crisp morning detracts from the feeling of imminent danger, following them like buzzards waiting for the death throes of a small animal.

Connors calls for the men to gather around at the yaw of the entryway. He’s studying a large paper map and directing men to go out to different areas of the city. It’s a supply run. They need water, food, ammo, weapons, and anything else worth salvaging.

Despite ever-growing unease, Connors decides to stay in San Antonio for another night so the green men can get some “quality sack-time.”

Some take their turn on watch, while the others sleep. There is less chatter and more snoring than on the previous night. Even Rose can find a nice corner on the North side of the mission in which to curl up. But, before long, she’s startled awake by someone speaking in broken sentences, and she can taste the bitterness of fear building in the air.

Sergeant Hollander who’s awake says something into the ear of one of the green man they call Private Little, not because it’s his name, but because he is very young and perhaps too small for his age. Private Little moves across the room and taps the, sleeping, major’s shoulder. Connors wakes on the first light tap.

After a few traded words, Connors points to the front of the Alamo, where the big double doors hang, closed and barricaded from the inside. He’s giving orders and drawing an imaginary circle in the air with his finger. He is scanning the darkness of the building.

The men are being wakened, one at a time. Others, already awake, place their hands over the mouths of the ones just waking, so they don’t make any noise. The major signals for them to keep down and remain quiet.

Dr. Valentine positions herself so that she’s closer to Rose and Nettle.

“What is it?” says Rose. She wants to touch Dr. Valentine, to gain comfort from the connection with the woman, but she knows the no contact rule has been reinstated and very much in effect, so as difficult as it is, she doesn’t touch her. She can smell the woman’s sweat, and it smells sweet in the cool darkness of the mission, but the smell of fear is drowning it out.

“I’m not sure. I’ll find out, you and Nettle wait right here. Don’t move, okay?” Valentine dusts the grittiness of decades of dirt from her pants. The particles fall to the floor in a small shower.

“What do you mean you think “It’s” inside? What is “It,” Private?” says Connors. He orders the men to their feet.

They prepare themselves, making as little noise as they can manage. Impenetrable shadows cling to the walls and drape the corners of the building like cobwebs.

A small fire in the stone ring does nothing to light up the veil of the deep black cover. Rose watches, her eyes peeled for motion, she sees nothing, at first. Then there’s a flutter of movement. The motion is followed by a shuffle of sound. “Major,” she says. “It’s something… some… things are watching us from over there.” She points into the chasm of shadows.

“Weapons up, and fire only on my command,” Connors says, struggling to maintain a level of calm. He squints his eyes almost shut so he can see into the deep recesses of gloom. How many things? What are they doing? Can you tell how many there are?”

“They’re waiting, just there, and watching us,” says Rose pulling her knees to her chest, hugging them tightly to her body. She buries her face in her knees to hide her eyes, fearing the inevitable.”

“Why can’t we see them, Rose?” says Dr. Valentine.

“Because they make you think you can’t, that’s why. They’re already inside your heads like Hawthorne got inside the green men’s heads before.”

“Private Little, build up the fire,” says Connors.

The private dutifully moves toward the smoldering stone ring as he’s been ordered. He bends down retrieving a broken chair back, in one shaking hand, while holding his pistol in the other. He slinks cautiously towards the ring which is some twenty feet from the relative safety of the group. He freezes, moving his head from side to side, slowly, snake-like. He drops the chair back, and it clatters dully to the floor. His hand searches wildly for his pistol. He panics. Hands flailing. He breath come faster, the depth is shallow, and turn into high-pitched gasps of terror.

Hands the color of burnt charcoal reach outward and grasp Private Little by his gaunt face. He’s pulled away from the light. He screams for help. The green men shout for him. Men closest to him run to the place where he was last seen. The major stops them in their tracks, calling them back to their places.

Private Little’s blood-gurgling screams fill the cavity of the sanctuary. Crying gasps for help echo from the rafters, and the thick walls of the Alamo, for a long time before fading away into nothingness. The soldiers plead with Connors to let them go in a rescue the private. Hollander stumbles forward, but Connors tackles him. He won’t have any of it.

“Until I have a better idea as to what we’re dealing with here, no one moves, no one talks, and no one fires, in case Little isn’t already dead,” says the major. But no one acts like there’s much hope of Little still in there, looking back at them.

The only sound in the Alamo is of heavy breathing. No one’s moving. Major Connors stands in place thinking for a few moments before surprising everyone. He dashes across the room closing the distance between the safety of the group and the shadowland where all the dark things dwell.

Hollander scrambles futilely to grab the major, to hold him back from what could only be certain death, but Connors is too far away to stop, and already he’s reaching for the chair back, laying where Private Little dropped it on the cobblestones. He flings the chair, it lands, covering a feeble tongue of flame. The fire dies out entirely. Thin and cooling spirals of light-gray smoke rise in little coils toward the unseen ceiling above. There’s no time to stir the coals and get the fire going. He turns, without stopping, and runs as fast as his legs will carry him, back to where the group is waiting.

Something’s moving again. This time it’s running alongside Connors. The major hasn’t noticed it’s stalking him, so Rose calls out to warn him. Hearing her, he veers away from the danger and safely returns to the group. The green men are a ball of raw nerve endings, but their driving needs to avenge Private Little overrides their terror.

They wait, hoping against all hope, hemmed in at all sides by predators of other-worldly origin, hell-bent and determined to destroy them one and all, they wait. Rose wills the chair back to catch fire, but the flames were smothered. Only a small palmful of throbbing, marbled coals remain scattered in the center of a light blanket of ash.

It’s not probable, but the shadows themselves seem to close slowly in, all around the group, from all sides, leaving just the narrowest margin of sickly orange light around them. A faltering halo from small flickering lanterns placed around the perimeter of the group is the last light any of them will likely see.

The structure grows humid. Clammy skin drips with moisture, and the temperature plummets several degrees. Water vapor spouts from open mouths and flaring nostrils. Rose remains huddled in the corner with her head buried behind her knees.

Dr. Valentine has returned to be at her side, an old six-shooter held tight in her trembling hand. “What are they, Rose, do you know what it is we’re dealing with here?”

Rose doesn’t have a chance to reply, before Major Connors, overhearing Valentine, answers.

“Doldrums.” They match the description of the reports from Laughlin Air Force Base, months earlier. “I’d heard about’em. Thought they were a myth. Truthfully, I’m not surprised to be running into another kind of the Turned. God only knows how many different types there are.”

“Lots and lots,” says Rose, looking up to Dr. Valentine. “lots and lots.”

Rumbles and scraping sounds, like claws dragging across the walls, come forth from somewhere in the shadows, mere heartbeats before the moment of the attack. And then it begins.

Clawing hands from all sides, grab at the green men, tearing at them, pulling them from sight, man, after man, after man.

“Open fire!” Connors says.

Weapons fire is unleashed at will, in all directions. The flashes are blinding, the noise deafening. The mission is filled with visions of chaos, the sounds of battle, and the smell of fear, and of blood, and other unspeakable things. Human entrails are slung out from the dominion of the Doldrums.

Rose, her hands clamped over her ears, can still hear Dr. Valentine’s blood-curdling screams. A shiny black hand has taken possession of her, by her leg. She’s firing into the darkness, sending bullets zipping into it, not caring enough to take aim.

Rose takes Dr. Valentine by the arm and pulls with all the strength she has in her tiny body, utterly breaking the no contact rule, but under the circumstance, she thinks it’ll be alright to do so. She pulls at Dr. Valentine, the Doldrum has an unrelenting hold on its prize.

Rose pulls harder, Dr. Valentine falls to the ground kicking her free leg against the dark hand and pushing backward with her free leg. Rose drags her backward, across the floor, and the thing slowly surfaces. The face of a Doldrum breaks into the light of the lanterns.

Tar-black, plucked-goose skin covers the face of the Doldrum. Its large matte-yellow eyes are wide with the anticipation of drawing its prey back into the shadow. Long pointed ears and small sharp teeth, like those of a shark, make up the face of horror, gnashing at Dr. Valentine, but only catching mouthfuls of air with each chomp.

Without warning, the chair back bursts into flames. The fire-light floods the room in a whoosh of gold, red, and orange flames. The Doldrum frees the doctor from its death-grip and crawls away, seething in anger at losing its meal.

The margin of light grows from the pale orange to bright yellow and touches the thick walls of the Alamo. The fight to hold the majestic old structure has begun, for the second time in its majestic history. A dozen Doldrums clamor and try to hug the walls, seeking out any remnant of shadow they can.

“There are so many of them,” says Dr. Valentine.

“Not for long,” says Sergeant Hollander.

The fire is burning hotter and brighter. The shadows are receding as the light increases. The Doldrums are crawling along an ever thinner, more revealing border of the failing protection of darkness. Able to find their targets, the green men go on the attack. Like a nest of angry hornets, bullets fly to find the enemy, turning them into quivering corpses.

Five men were lost to the Doldrums. Rose wonders how many will make it alive to where they’re going. Unable to sleep, she wedges herself into a well-lit corner, next to Nettle, and Dr. Valentine. She begs silently for the intoxicating, morning sun to make its appearance.

Early the next morning, as the sun peaks above the hazy horizon, they waste no time loading the vehicles and moving out of San Antonio. Rose shakes blood clots and dust bunnies from her feet, never to look back again.

The thundering of battle has brought something from the surrounding countryside. An evil no one has seen since before the beginning of the end. A different kind of enemy. This one’s not at all like a Wicked Briar, nor is it like a Doldrum, hiding in the dark like a petty thief waiting for an unsuspecting mark.

This enemy is organized, cold, and calculating, and she watches everything the humans are doing from her perch on a distant hillside. Her drones stand at her back, waiting for her to give them a command to follow. They’ll follow her and do whatever she asks of them. Their own survival means nothing, compared to the greater good and the survival of the hive, and of their queen.

There are more than troublesome humans milling around down there. She can smell Rose’s fertile odor blowing towards her on the changing wind. The small thing isn’t human like the others. She’s a threat to the queen’s rule, a festering boil on the skin of her monarchy. Instincts programmed into her DNA, demands that this new challenger is wiped from the face of her kingdom.

It’s another queen, younger by the immature stink of pheromones, but no less, a risk to everything she has struggled to construct. The order of things as she has laid them, and the future as she has foreseen it to be. Even now the young queen’s chemical markers entice her drones, making them uneasy, confusing their thoughts of loyalty. Only the true queen shall live and rightfully rule this planet. The little queen must die.

Chapter Fifteen

“As a child, I never imagined that all the real monsters in the world would be human…”

-Unknown

The serenity of the Stage Coach Inn graces the long, straight road of Salado, the white-painted face of this unassuming place luminesces in the ruddiness of the sun.

A great, gnarled oak tree grows near the inn’s porch, running the full length of the front of the building. Its trunk has grown since the inn was constructed. Here and there, the girth of the tree pries the deck-boards up like broken teeth. The tree, reaching to the sky, its mammoth limbs bending beneath their own unmeasurable heft, triggers a memory for Rose.

Her full memory hasn’t returned, as Dr. Shaw thought it might, but somewhere in the deepest recesses of what’s left of her mind, she recollects playing in a tree, much like this one. In her memory, a woman was calling to her, “Be careful and come back down from there before you break her neck,” the woman laughed, as she ran around the bottom of the tree, nervous about the possibility of Rose falling. This woman must have loved her to care if Rose fell from the high boughs. Rose wants someone to love her again. The memory is faded, like blue jeans left on the line, it’s color bleaching away in the harsh summer heat.

A wide and swaying river runs along the side of the inn, and curves around to the back, running past a pebble-laden bank. There was once a tire swing hanging in a pecan tree. The rope still hangs there, but it rotted through, only frayed remnants of the rope remains, and the tire lays on the ground beneath it; dry rotted. She can’t see the bottom of the river, but she can see the surface moving as large fish, or some other thing swims hurriedly like an invisible arrow beneath it.

“This is the place,” says the major. We’re staying here for the night.” He throws open the doors to one of the trucks and carried in supplies, the food, and water they’ve collected along their journey. He doesn’t need to issue any orders, the green men fall in and help him unload everything.

There are Turned here. Rose can smell fleeting traces of them. But, there are always Turned, somewhere, all the time. Later the green men will form search parties, like they always do, in each new place they stop for any length of time. They’ll scout for hostiles and survivors. It’s more likely they’ll find hostiles and no survivors. In fact, they haven’t found any survivors at all since leaving Camp Able behind.

The town is beautiful; like nothing she’s ever seen before; picturesque and peaceful, but that’s the dangerous thing about places like this. It pretends to be a protective haven for road-weary travelers, with its little houses and shops, it’s fountain and stone-clad walkways, with moss growing between the pavers, all the while harboring death.

Oak and pecan trees densely cover the surrounding countryside. She picks up a pecan and holds it between her dirty fingers, pinching her soft fingertips against the shell. She knows it for what it is; a seed. She feels a strong connection to it as if she and it are one in the same. How could such a small thing grow into such an extraordinary tree one day? If planted, it will change the world around it as it matures. She kneels, feeling the dirt pressing into her knees. She scoops a handful of soil out of the ground leaving a small hole, places the seed in and covers it over.

The green men don’t trust Rose, never have, and she’s used to it, and they trust Nettle even less. Nettle’s hands have remained wrapped up for a long time. It’s hard for her to do anything, at all, for herself. They lead Nettle around, secured to the end of a long pole. A leather belt fastened to the end of it and buckled securely around her neck keeps her at a safe distance from everyone. Nettle’s neck is rubbed raw, and it’s starting to bleed. Rose doesn’t like it, and often says things in Nettle’s defense. “She can’t help what she is,” says Rose, “Leave her alone, she’s just a little girl.” The plea doesn’t help anything, and everyone continues to treat Nettle like some kind of diseased animal.

Rose is ushered, roughly, into the foyer of the inn, and right inside the door, next to where some of the supplies have been stacked, is an easel. On the easel is perched a small paper menu. It’s somewhat faded, and there’s a spot of mildew creeping along its corner, it says Hush Puppies, Tomato Aspic, Banana Fritters, and Strawberry Kiss. What must a Strawberry Kiss taste like?

Major Connors and most of his men have gone out to look for survivors, and hostiles, and supplies, just as Rose knew they would. Two green men stay behind, one to prepare the evening’s meal, and another to keep watch over their temporary base of operations, as the major calls it.

Lieutenant April, is in the kitchen, trying to formulate a recipe out of the odds and ends which have been scavenged from unlikely places, while the second, Private Nelson, strolls from room to room, from the front of the inn to the back, peering from each window for signs of the enemy.

Rose, Nettle, and Dr. Valentine sit in what used to be the dining room amidst the old, round, tables covered in dusty, red-checkered tablecloths. Big square windows open out onto the babbling river. The surface of the water glistens like shards of glass, tumbling end over end in the sun.

Dr. Valentine is particularly quiet today, she’s been different since San Antonio. Sometimes Rose catches her looking at her and Nettle out of the corner of her eye. She never says anything. Something’s changed, but Rose can’t put her finger on it.

Nettle is huddled in the corner, where she spends most of her time doing nothing but rocking gently and talking to herself. She’s always watching the windows and doorways. She’s searching for an avenue of escape, and she’ll take it too if she gets a chance. It wouldn’t take much to make Nettle want to run away from the major and the green men. She rubs her hand-wrappings against the floor and the furniture, trying to loosen them, and Dr. Valentine, when she catches her doing it, warns her not to do it anymore. As soon as Dr. Valentine is distracted though, Nettle returns to scraping the tape on anything that looks like it might tear the bandage.

Rose has found a spoon and is preoccupied, looking at her distorted reflection. Her hair is cropped short, but it’s been growing longer since there’s no one around to cut it. She asked the barber at Camp Able why the children had to have their cut so short, and he said, it’s to keep the bugs off your mangy heads. She told him she likes bugs so it wouldn’t have bothered her having a few extra around in case she ever got hungry. He never spoke to her again after that time.

Her eyes are shaped differently than Dr. Valentine’s or Nettle’s. Her skin is a different color too. “I look different than you, Dr. Valentine. My eyes are different, and my skin…”

Dr. Valentine acts as if she hasn’t heard her, but she pulls herself back to the present and answers softly, “You’re more different than you or any of us can possibly understand. Both you and Nettle and the other children back at Camp Able are very… unique. But yes, if you mean your physical appearance, you were Asian, once. The body you’re in… it has Asian traits.”

“Asian…” Rose says, trying out the word to see how it feels on her tongue. Plus, maybe saying it aloud would make her feel more Asian, and less like a monster to be feared by so many.

“You said the body I’m in was Asian. What do you mean? How could I have been something before that I’m not now?”

“Before the accident changed you, at least one of your parents were Asian. I suspect both probably were. It’s why you have Asian traits like the single epicanthic fold of your eyes, your black hair, and the coloring of your skin.”

Rose gazes into the spoon again, turning it from side to side, considering what Dr. Valentine has said. “Sometimes, I remember a woman who used to come into my room at night. She would kiss me on the cheek, but I’m not sure if it’s real or not… it may have been only a dream… or something I made up in my head.”

“I think you might be remembering your mother.”

“What happened to make us the way we are? Whatever we are,” says Rose, “Why is it everyone’s so scared of us?”

“The entire world was on the eve of a war. Everything was much different than it is today, Rose. People were fighting against tyranny, rather than fighting to stay alive. We were standing up for ideals and freedom. I was living in a place called California at the time; my daughter, Savannah, and I. We were happy, just the two of us.

Men were leaving their families to go overseas to fight. But, then something very unexpected happened. We thought the only monsters were the Germans and the Japanese. Until we looked up into the sky and found death staring back down at us.” Dr. Valentine’s voice sounds distant and haunted. “A flying-ship… It came from somewhere else and parked itself right over the city of Los Angeles. No one knew if it intended to do anything, other than just hovering there. But, I guess the military being afraid it was the Nazis or the Japs invading, well, they didn’t wait around to find out. They threw everything we had at it until they cracked it wide open and all the spirits of Hell and all Damnation came pouring out, spilling on top of our heads. We didn’t see anything of course, but it was the only possible answer for what came after.”

“Is California a long way from here?” says Nettle.

“It is,” says Dr. Valentine, dryly. Nettle’s question pulls her away from the memory.

“Then how did you get here?” says Rose, gazing into the spoon again. Her nose looks larger, in the reflection, than it is in real life, she knows because as she looks at it in the spoon, she feels it with a free hand. She turns her head from side-to-side studying the image inside the concave utensil.

“Major Connors. It was him. He had found me… rescued me. We hadn’t planned to come all the way to Texas, but with each passing mile, the contamination outpaced us. What we found was people were changing in every town we came to.”

“Into the Turned?” Nettle says.

“Yes, into the Turned, but at first it wasn’t bad. There were small physical changes early on and then people began to attack any and every living thing. We kept moving on, mile after mile… day after day. It wasn’t long before things became much worse. We realized we couldn’t outrun it anymore, so we decided it would be best to take shelter at Camp Able.”

“Where did you find us? Did you bring me with you from California?” says Rose.

“I found you near Camp Able, one day when I was out doing field research, Rose. Nettle, you and the other children were already at Camp Able when Major Connors and I arrived.”

Rose remains quiet, gazing into the spoon, and thinking more about Dr. Valentine’s story, before laying the spoon on a small table, and asking, “Where’s your daughter now?

“She’s gone. She became ill and died a few days later.” A pang of deep guilt throbbed within Dr. Valentine. “I helped her die, to ease her suffering. I didn’t know then that if I’d left her alone, she would have recovered. She would have become something like you. Something not quite human.”

“What are we?” says Rose.

Dr. Valentine takes a deep breath, making her chest rise, she holds it a moment then exhales slowly, her shoulders slump as the breath whistles gently when escaping through her teeth. “I think you’re, two, very sick little girls, but I believe we may still be able to help you, and other children like yourselves, somehow.”

“Dr. Shaw doesn’t think so, does he? He doesn’t think we can be helped. He thinks we’re monsters, and he wants to kill us, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does, but I want to believe that there is still hope, and I’ll try to find a way to help you.”

The men return to the inn by 1700 hours. Something has Connors very anxious, even more than usual. He calls Dr. Shaw and Dr. Valentine outside to speak with him. Dr. Valentine instructs Rose to wait with Nettle and not to go anywhere. To make sure the girls stay put, Private Nelson is assigned to keep an eye on them. He’s not observant, he’s exhausted, and points the barrel of his rifle in the general direction of the girls and chews his dirty fingernails.

From where Rose is seated, directly in front of the large, wood-framed windows, she has a good view of what’s going on outside. Strapped across the hood of one of the trucks is an animal; large and brown. Superimposed images of earth’s creatures closely matching this one, flicker across her vision. The sensation isn’t as strong as the first time she experienced a flood of information. Perhaps she’s become conditioned to the vertiginous feeling it causes within her. Before the experience would upset and nauseate her, but now she welcomes it when it happens. The pictures and words help her to classify and categorize things like the animal, outside.

Strange symbols scroll before her eyes, even if she closes her eyelids, she can still see the information clearly. She’s been unable to decipher them, but this time, it’s as if someone flicked a switch. The symbols are changing and rearranging so she can read them. The correct image of the animal, eventually, flashes before her vision and freezes, and the symbols hovering over the image reads White-Tail Deer - Odocoileus Virginianus – Planet Earth – Herbivore – Non-Hostile. The information is prerecorded in her brain, but its absent of one small, but important variance. The very same detail which is most likely Major Connors’s concern, and has Dr. Shaw and Dr. Valentine’s full attention.

Major Connors is holding something which is attached to one of the bodies of the deer. It presents as long, and wispy, and green, much like a vine with bifurcations along its main trunk. The source of his apprehension is plain to Rose. The contamination is spreading beyond humans and affecting the planet’s wildlife.

“So much for fresh, venison,” says Private Nelson who’s looking over her shoulder, and out the window. He wrinkles his nose, showing missing teeth, he sneers at Rose, and Nettle, in turn, giving a stare meant to cause them to melt into trembling puddles. “Gosh darned, Turned-thangs.”

Within the hour the carcasses are removed as from the inn as safely possible and burned, and afterward, everyone goes to the river as a group to clean up. Layers upon layers of dirt and odor are scrubbed from wearied bodies. The water has a powerful revitalizing effect on everyone.

In happier days, before the Turned came, people would have come down to the river to swim and socialize with each other. They’d have played games, and had barbeques, and picnics would have dotted the waving bank. Even a marriage or two might have been performed near the water’s edge. Maybe those days are gone. Maybe not. Who knows? But even now, after so much death has flooded the land with spilled human blood, the clean rushing water still offers a gift which lifts the spirits of even the most hopeless of souls, and temporarily washes away the weariness. Even Rose and Nettle find, somewhere, deep inside themselves, a playful and genuine child-like spirit, whether it truly belongs within them or not.

A beautiful bronze statue resides in the river water, perched squarely on a large, flat-topped boulder. The statue is one of a lovely young woman with long hair cascading down her back. The passing waves wet the woman’s bronzed face, making it appear, to those who gaze upon it, that the woman is sobbing. Tears cascade down her face. She has the tail of a big fish. Her scales are sturdy, and thick, and gleam prominently in the hot sun.

When Rose looks at the expression of the woman, frozen in time, she thinks of Dr. Valentine, because to her, the woman looks so sad; so broken. She takes a place, wet with river-water, in front of the statue. On the rock, there’s a large catfish, and next to the fish is a bronze plaque which reads: THE SIREN OF SALADO.

Once upon a time, an Indian maiden named Sirena wanted very much to be married to an Indian brave, but this Indian brave did not feel for Sirena like she did for him. She would sit by the water every day and watch herself in the reflection of the rippling water. She spoke her wish that the Indian brave would fall madly in love with her.

A magical catfish, swimming in the cold water, overheard her wish and came to the surface to speak with her. He swore to help her to win the love of her heart’s desire. If she would in return, agree to become a mermaid on each full moon for a year and swim with the catfish in the water. Also, she would have to agree to one additional thing…

Rose steals a quick glance at the bronze casting of the catfish, trying to imagine the conversation between it and Sirena before she returns to reading the story. She thinks, Ah, here’s the catch.

If human eyes should ever see her, while she was transfigured into a mermaid, she would have to remain a mermaid forever and stay with the catfish.

“You planned it all, you dirty, old catfish.”

Sirena agreed on the catfish’s terms, and soon she became the young bride of the Indian brave, and on every full moon, she would swim with the catfish as she promised. On the last full moon of the year, she was swimming when a fishing hook snagged her fin and forced her to the shoreline to remove it.

All the while, she pulled and tugged on the hook to remove it from her fin, her husband was watching her from a place amongst the trees. Their eyes met, her heart broke. And the catfish pulled her into the icy water, never to see her true love again. The legend claims the waters of the river flow from the Siren’s tears.

“I recognize you,” Nettle says, startling Rose.

“You recognize me?” What do you mean? Of course, you recognize me. I was across the corridor from you,” says Rose, kicking her feet in the cold water. She can feel the life force of the river seeping directly into her thirsty skin. It waters her and sates her craving for it. Nourishing her, rehydrating and replenishing her strength. She closes her eyes and looks up to the sun. The combination of the water and the sunlight are like a beautiful song playing and buzzing in her ears.

Nettle takes a spot on the boulder, besides Rose, dipping her small feet into the water too. They act like little girls, even best friends out for a peaceful summer afternoon swim. “That’s not what I mean,” says Nettle shaking her head and trailing the tip of her dainty finger across the surface of the water. Her finger makes delicate spirals in the frigid water. “Ivy suspected it. Hawthorne did too. Most of the others knew. We could all tell there was something much different about you than any of the rest of us... the color of your eyes gives it away. Lily was the one to smell it on you first.”

“Smell?” Rose sniffs her hands and then lifting her arm, sniffs at an armpit. This causes Nettle to laugh at her.

“No not like that. You’re not like any of the rest of us. Do you not know what…?”

Before Nettle can finish her thought, something from the other side of the river ripping across the surface of the water and grabs one of her thin legs. She screams and kicks against it. She feels for the creature below the water, but she can’t make it let go. It pulls at her, harder. She screams louder, slapping her hands against the surface of the river until her waterlogged bandages swell and fall heavily from her hands, like soggy party-streamers. Rose pulls at Nettle to keep her from being dragged deeper into the river.

Dr. Valentine, hearing the girls’ cries and screams runs to them. She’s entering the chilly water and wading thigh-deep to the point where Nettle is fighting with the unseen creature. Both girls are in the midst of a tug of war, for Nettle’s life. Dr. Valentine calls to Rose, but Rose is so frightened, she can’t make herself respond. She can only open her mouth, wide, and make pleading groans and screeches.

Major Connors follows closely behind Dr. Valentine, his sidearm is drawn, he’s holding it high in the air to keep it from getting wet.

Nettle’s head disappears under the surface. Rose has her arms wrapped beneath Nettle’s arms, and her hands latch around the girl’s chest, and so when the beast pulls Nettle further into the water, Rose is pulled right along with her.

Dr. Valentine has no choice, she swims out to them. The green men aim their weapons at the point where the thing should be under the flowing water. They can’t fire. There’s not a clear shot, without taking a chance of hitting Dr. Valentine or Rose and Nettle.

The futility of Rose’s attempt to rescue Nettle becomes apparent as the girl’s head disappears a final time beneath the water, but she still has her by one of her slippery hands. The other is flailing about searching for something or someone to grab on to, and that someone is Dr. Valentine.

Dr. Valentine dives for Nettle, and in the heat of the moment, thoughtlessly extends her arm to take hold of the child’s swinging hand. Instant shockwaves rip through her brain which presses and pounds against the interior of her brain case. The grey matter threatens to escape from her eye sockets and ear canals, as the pressure builds in her head. Screaming, intolerable pain. Blinding agony wrapping around and then grinding, every nerve-ending in her body to a pulp. She freezes as tetany seizes and locks her muscles, trapping them in a steely and fiery-grip.

She falls backward, stiff as a board, into Major Connors’s arms. He’s popping off rounds; two, four, six bullets, into the water. Nettle is launched from under the water, held high in a writhing, suction-covered tentacle. Another muscular appendage, and another, and another rise from the churning river like gargantuan earthworms. They fasten onto Nettle and wriggle tight around her ankles and arms and wrists. They tighten more and pull. Her small frame separates into bloody sections. Grabbing, winding, probing, the tentacles slap and part the surface. The major pulls Dr. Valentine towards the bank, and relative safety, Rose follows, and the green men unanimously declare open season on the river-demon.

It undulates in the deep water. Slow and ominous it reveals itself. Bullets are sinking into its pruney, once-human exterior. It howls and gurgles in pain as bullets sink into it rubbery hide. It scuttles toward the bank, and once out of the river, it moves with surprising speed, attacking the men on the shoreline, starting with the closest and working through the line. Those who find themselves caught up in its twirling arms are quickly drawn and quartered as if they were nothing more than cornhusk dolls.

The Major calls for a retreat, but besides Dr. Valentine, Dr. Shaw, Rose, and Sergeant Hollander, there’s no one left alive.

Once at a safe distance, Connors lobs a grenade at the monster, but it disappears back from where it came, leaving the grenade behind, to explode harmlessly on the shoreline.

Dr. Valentine’s in bad shape. She’s screaming. Consciousness slips from her, and she goes slack in the major’s arms. He lifts her limp body and carries her back to the inn. Sneering at Dr. Shaw as he passes. Dr. Shaw’s hiding behind a cottonwood tree.

Connors collapses on the front porch of the inn, falling on top of Dr. Valentine. She reaches for him deliriously, as he leaves her and runs into the building. Rose falls to her knees beside her, reaching out to her, causing Dr. Valentine to scream louder and pull away. She’s hallucinating and saying odd things, rambling incoherently.

Connors returns with a syringe in his hand, He pops the plastic top off the needle, with his teeth, spitting it out on the porch. He jabs the hypodermic needle into Dr. Valentine’s thigh, she doesn’t even flinch. The morphine does little to silence the finger-gnawing pain, tearing its way through her failing body. Nettle’s venom is eating her from the inside out. Prying her bones apart to dissolve the marrow within. The toxin overcomes her. She falls into a never-ending pit, spinning head over heels, over and over, until the world passes away, leaving her clinging to life.

Tonight will be a long night for everyone, especially Rose, who has come to love Dr. Valentine like the mother she can’t remember.

Chapter Sixteen

“All concerns of men go wrong when they wish to cure evil with evil.”

-Sophocles

Thirteen days have passed since Salado and the death of Nettle and most of the green men. Dr. Valentine is well enough to travel, again. Rose never strays far from her side. They’re all cooped up in the Flying Fish, once again.

Major Connors has been on the radio, tirelessly, calling to Fort Worth to “Come in.” But, they never do “Come in,” and the major uses words which aren’t nice words at all, and as the day goes by, the major practices the words until he gets very good at saying them. Pretty soon he’s saying them without even having to take a breath between each one, which impresses Rose.

“Fort Worth, Last Command, come in. This is Major Creighton Connors out of Camp Able on route to you, over.” He steals a glance at the map. “Must still be too far out, or the signals not getting through, or there’s no one there to hear it.”

Dr. Shaw is given the task of changing the dressing on Dr. Valentine’s wounded hand. Rose doesn’t like it, because she’s been able to take care of her just fine on her own, without Dr. Shaw’s help. She’s also been gaining more freedom than she’s had since they left Camp Able.

Eventually, Dr. Valentine’s able to prop herself up on one of the ambulance berths and manages to talk above a whisper. It’s the first time she’s been able to speak since the accident. Rose is relieved.

Major Connors passes Dr. Valentine a bottle of some dark and strong-smelling liquid. Whatever’s in it makes her voice come out in slow motion, and the things she says are funny. And the liquid also makes her sleep a lot too. Rose decides whatever’s in the bottle must be good medicine to make her feel so much better.

The windows on the old ambulance are all rolled down as far as they can be rolled because the summer days are tremendously hot in Texas and it’s stifling inside. Static comes through the sunbaked speakers of the radio. No one has answered the major’s calls, so he’s stopped calling out as often as he did in the beginning. But all at once he sits straight up in his seat, cocks his head to one side and listens for a few drawn out moments.

He grabs the microphone from the dash, holding it, he waits anxiously. At first, the sounds were entirely inaudible to everyone but him. But now, everyone can hear the voice clearly, as it comes through. “…rt Worth Last Command respond. Repeat, this is Fort Worth Last Command Base, respond. Over.”

Major Connors is more excited than Rose has ever seen him be about anything. He presses the button on the side of the mic, “This is Major Connors, Commanding Officer of Camp Able in route to Fort Worth, Last Command Base.”

“God Almighty, I don’t believe my ears. Connors! You old dog. This is Collier.”

“Collier? My God, what are you doing in Fort Worth?”

“Well, it’s Colonel Collier now, and it’s a long story.”

“This is impossible. I find you during the apocalypse, and you outrank me? Now I know this is a nightmare.”

“Just in the right place at the right time, I guess. What’s your position?”

“At best guess, two to three days out from Last Command. Do you have any intel on the terrain or enemy movement between… where are we?” says Connors looking at the map, “Waco and you?”

“Negative. I don’t send men out that far anymore. Just don’t have them to send. I’m down to 13 men and one fat genius.”

“That must be the guy we’re coming to see,” says Connors.

“Yup, that’s the guy. I heard you were looking for someone who might have some insight on some kids. I didn’t know you were coming, but I’m sure glad you are it’ll be good to see you again, Connors.”

“It’ll be good to see you again too, sir” Connors chuckles.

“Your visit is timely, Creighton.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. A few nights ago, we got an odd message from a satellite base we set up in Dallas, a while back. The transmission was cut off, so I don’t know whether it was trouble brewing or not. I sent out a couple men, all we could spare, but haven’t heard hide nor hair from them. I hate to do this to you Creighton….”

“You want us to make a side-trip?”

“Affirmative. I’m really sorry to have to do this to you, Connors, but if you could drive by and wave at the base, that would be great. And tell, O’Riley, I said to send us a bottle of the good stuff.”

“O’Riley? You don’t mean Miles O’Riley?”

“The one and only.”

“I’ll be a son-of-a…. I haven’t seen him since… hey, that reminds me, he still owes me ten dollars.”

“Look, Collier. I mean colonel, I’ve never been one to argue with a superior…”

“The hell you ain’t never, ha, ha,”

“Well, usually, I’ve never… but we’re in no position to make a side trip. With all due respect, I have an injured person. She’s in need of medical attention ASAP. I have one soldier with me, a kid, and a coward, and Dallas takes us way off course.”

Shaw looks as if he could cut Connors in half with his glare, but he goes back to changing Dr. Valentine’s bandages after Connors catches him looking at him.

Static fills the speakers again. Rose thinks they’ve lost the signal, but then the colonel’s voice comes back loud and clear.

“I understand, but there are also civilians there, and we need to make sure they’re as safe as they can be, within reason. There’re some crates there too, and we need those pretty badly. Last I know of the crates they were stored in warehouse number six. They’re marked with my name, and there should be three of them. It would be of special interest to me if you can bring those back, intact.”

Major Connors buries his head in his hand, massaging his face harder than Rose would have thought possible without breaking his cheekbones. “Consider it done. Connors out.”

“Connors, it’s good to know you’re alive.”

“Yeah,” It takes everything Connors has, to say, “You too, sir.”

The major’s not happy. He throws the mic into the windshield and practices his bad words some more. He’s pretty much perfected them. He looks over his shoulder into the back of the ambulance where Dr. Valentine is swaying from drinking too much of the good medicine. Rose smiles at him. She’s surprised because instead of trying to shoot her, he returns a forced smile. She doesn’t know what to do with this now that it happened, so she leans back and rests next to one thoroughly medicated, Dr. Valentine, who falls into the side of the Flying Fish, head first and begins to snore.

Chapter Seventeen

“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.”

-Hellen Keller

Something hits the outside of the ambulance, rocking it with a jolt. The Fish veers to the right, but Sergeant Hollander has things well under control. Rose falls onto Dr. Valentine who rolls out of the berth and onto the floor. Tires screech and hot rubber vaporizes, leaving black smoke to billow above the road behind them.

“What happened?” cries Dr. Valentine. She’s groggy, weaving like a sailboat in a hurricane, but she’s more like the Dr. Valentine Rose remembers.

“I think we hit something,” says Connors.

“No, something hit us,” says Sergeant Hollander. “I think we might’a blew a tire. We gotta pull over and fix it.”

“There,” says Connors, pointing to an abandoned gas station, about a quarter of a mile ahead. “Maybe we can find some food and fuel.”

“And I wouldn’t mind taking a piss,” adds Dr. Shaw.

The Flying Fish closes the distance between them and the station. It limps along like an old man, to a park bench. It rolls into the deserted lot. The gravel crackles and pops beneath the tires as they slow to a stop.

Two, unassuming, fuel pumps grace the exterior drive. Red and blue, plastic flags many torn away, clap in the hot breeze. The smell of rain looms in the air and grey clouds build in the distance. Rose feels a strange drunkenness coming on; she’s an addict for a good storm, and it’s been too long since her last fix. Her mouth and lips feel even drier now because she’s been teased with the rainy smell.

“We need to get the tire changed before those thunderheads up there turn loose on us,” says Connors, pointing west.

Rounding the rear fender of the ambulance the men gather around the flat tire and stare at it without saying a word. The tire yawns, a hole gapes in the side-wall.

“Strange spot to have a blowout,” says Dr. Shaw. “You’d think if we ran over something the damage would be on the treads, not the sidewall; at least you’d think so, anyhow. Right?”

“Like I said,” says Hollander. “we didn’t hit anything, something hit us.”

On closer inspection, they find an evil-looking chunk of steel buried in the rubber. It’s been hammer-forged and sharpened into an effective spearhead. A small part of a splintered shaft is still fixed to the end of it. “This is no accident. This is by design,” Connors says, eyeballing the horizon. “Someone threw this thing and blew the tire.”

“Let’s change it quickly then,” says Dr. Shaw, walking towards a dead tree to urinate. “This place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

“Right… as soon as you’re done watering the lawn, make yourself useful, and go tell Dr. Valentine and Rose that I said to stay inside, and keep the doors locked until we’re finished here. And hey, don’t wander off, we’re hitting the road as soon as the last lug’s tight. You got it, Shaw?”

“Yeah, Yeah,” says Shaw.

Shaw shakes it, zips it up, and returns to the Fish, where he finds Dr. Valentine cradling her injured hand, her eyes are half-closed. Rose is sitting across from her. When Dr. Shaw pokes his head inside, Rose glowers at him. He sees her but ignores the look. He knows well enough how the thing feels about him. “The Major thinks it’s better if you two hold up in here for now. They’re fixing the tire, and we’ll be getting on our way again.”

Rose is still glaring at Dr. Shaw. Dr. Valentine says nothing and nods her head. She puts the medicine-bottle to her lips. Frowning she turns it upside down and shakes it. The top of the bottle rattles on the chain which is attached to the bottle. Bone dry. Shaw closes the door. Rose locks it from inside.

“You know, Rose, you remind me of my daughter,” says Dr. Valentine, her voice slurring.

Rose sits quietly. She can smell the strong smell of the medicine on Dr. Valentine’s breath. Dr. Valentine forces her eyes to open and focuses on nothing in particular.

“She had a sweet spirit, always smiling, and singing… dancing. It was such a blessing to have known her. I was very lucky to have been her momma.”

Rose smiles gently. “I’m sorry Dr. Valentine.” Rose feels sad for her. It’s a shame that no matter what happens, nothing will bring Dr. Valentine’s daughter back to her.

“What will they do with me when we get to Fort Worth?” she asks. Her voice sounds all quivery. She can’t help how it comes out.

“They want to learn more about you. We think you can help us make things the way they were before,” says Dr. Valentine.

“Dr. Shaw wants to kill me.”

Dr. Valentine only nods and slips into a restless sleep.

Something unexpected and wonderful catches Dr. Shaw’s attention. Just there beside the front door of the service station, not fifty feet away, is a long red box with a sliding top. The white lettering on the front says 6 cents, Enjoy, Coca-Cola, Ice Cold.He thinks, not ice-cold now,but a Coke, is a Coke, hot or cold, and boy does he ever have one hell of a hankering for one.

It’s not so far away that he can’t grab a few and be back before anyone’s the wiser. The major and the sergeant are busy, furiously working to replace the blown tire. Dr. Valentine and that little monster are locked up tight. It’s not like I’ll even be out of sight. What could possibly happen?

He reaches for the lid, placing his fingers on the long black handle to slide the dust-covered lid open. It’s stubborn, but it slides. And inside is a whole lot of… not-a-damn-thing. He sighs, not bothering to close the box. He raises his head and something inside the station changes his mind about returning to the Fish. Near the back of the store, on a shelf is an issue of, Popular Science Monthly, Mechanics and Handicraft, it’s sitting right there on the shelf waiting for him to take it. The rest of the place looks pretty much ransacked. It’s a real treasure; one that he can’t resist. There may never be another publication of anything, ever again. And he never had the chance to read the issue staring him in the face, not twenty feet away.

The door opens easily, making the temptation even easier. There’s broken glass on the floor. It crunches under his feet like rice at a wedding. He steps gingerly as he goes, trying not to make too much noise in the loneliness of the station. He leans forward with each step he takes, looking past the endcap of each aisle for potential trouble. The place smells of concentrated urine.

One of the store-front windows is broken out, and bats have made a home in here. They cling from the ceiling by their toes. He steps even softer, so he doesn’t spook them, and works his way to the shelf. September 1942, the cover is beautiful and crisp. Its cover is graced with a large gun, being triggered by three brave soldiers. Nope, he hasn’t read this one. He rolls it up tightly and shoves it into his back pocket. He kicks a newspaper lying at is feet. It reads: Roosevelt Calls Troops Home, to Fight Alien Menace.

Glass breaks behind him and his hair stands up on the back of his neck. A cold shiver runs up the length of his spine. He clenches his teeth. His legs feel heavy. His blood seems to pool in them. He can barely manage to turn. He expects to find a Wicked Briar standing face to face with him, but that isn’t what he finds. A large dog, coming from a dark room in the back, spots him and bares its gleaming teeth. It hunches down, shoulder blades arched, ready to lunge at Shaw. Its hackles raise, and it drools long lines of thick saliva, which trail to the dirty floor.

“Oh, okay there, nice dog. You’re a nice dog… nice…”

It’s not a nice dog. It snarls and barks once in warning.

Shaw searches for a weapon or something which might distract the animal. There’s a tire iron on the counter. It’s too far away to reach, but he reaches out for it anyway, in vain. His useless attempt to reach it causes the dog to step forward and come into the light. It has growths of some kind on its back. Small, almost bonsai-like, trees sprouting from it. The vines run throughout the fur. The same as the deer in Salado, except more advanced. Further along in whatever transformation its undergoing.

“Are you alone, boy? Let’s hope you are.”

As if on cue, another canine comes from around a shelving unit, snarling, and growling, and clicking its teeth together.

“Oh, shit. Okay. You have a friend. A damn-ugly-friend. I’m just going to move to the counter so I can get over to that little tire iron. Okay, guys?”

The animals are intelligent. They won’t allow him to move much more than a few inches in any direction. For every inch, Shaw moves the dogs take two steps, and already, they are maneuvering to foil his plans to defend himself or escaping. The first, a German Shepherd, lowers its angular head, gluing its keen eyes on Shaw. The second, a mixed-breed, circles around, never losing track of Shaw, it snaps strong teeth into the empty air. Together, the dogs are moving in the close the gap and make a kill.

Shaw’s heart is in his throat, his breath comes in short pants. His skin feels numb and tingly all over. His ears pound like drums. He’s afraid to shout for help fearing the dogs would leap and tear his throat out. Inch by inch he eases toward the tire iron. It’s a race; a slow and agonizing race and the animals will get to him long before he gets to it.

He makes his move and scrambles for the tire iron. He slips on the broken glass covering the floor. The dogs begin their attack. The German Shepherd sinks its teeth into Shaw’s leg. The taste of hot blood entices the dog causing it to shake its head violently, trying to tear meat from the bone. He screams and raises his arms to his throat just in time to block the mixed-breed from locking on. The mixed-breed, instead, takes him by the arm. The raw strength of the dogs is bolstered by the smell and taste of blood. They intend to rip him in two.

The Shepherd yelps and drops dead, a spearhead in its heart. The mixed-breed lets go of Shaw’s arm. He holds it tight to his chest, blood pours from the wound.

The dog bares his teeth and goes after the other humans who killed its mate. It leaps. Connors shoots it between the eyes. Brains splatter onto Shaw’s clothes.

“Told you not to wander off,” says Connors. He and Sergeant Hollander back out of the station and return to the Flying Fish. “We’re leaving, Shaw. You better come with us unless you want to make this a permanent residence.”

Dr. Shaw hurries after them with no intention of staying here a moment longer.

Chapter Eighteen

“None of us really change over time. We only become more fully what we really are.”

-Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

The roads and highways stand clogged with debris, rusting cars, tractors, bicycles, and a dead horse litters the landscape. The journey has worn everyone egg-shell thin, and Connors’s patience is stripped to the bone. The burden of command and the responsibility to protect the two doctors and Rose is starting to shave off his inflexible exterior skin, leaving his soft innards on display. Rose thinks it makes him appear more human, and more vulnerable.

She doesn’t like the way Dr. Shaw keeps looking at her. It reminds her of the buzzards she’s seen on the roads before they go face down into the guts of a rotten carcass. She knows he has plans for her, which take place under the sharp point of one of his scalpels. She moves to sit closer to Dr. Valentine. After a while, Dr. Shaw’s focus moves on to other things, like cleaning his wounds.

They come to a place on the highway where Sergeant Hollander asks Connors, “This is it. Which way you wanna go?”

Looking the map over, as if he has a choice, Connors considers if he has it in him to disobey the direct order of a superior. He can just show up at Last Command as pretty-as-you-please. Of course, there would be that whole, firing squad thing, he’d have to face. Nah, it wouldn’t be a firing squad. It would be hanging. Bullets are a precious resource. So, the choice isn’t as simple as all that. Does he go up Interstate 35 West towards Last Command, or does he go up Interstate 35 East into Dallas?

He rubs his face with one hand, and scratches behind his ear, pondering his decision. He can feel the sandiness of the road grit, blown in through the passenger side window, where it’s collected on his face in a thick layer. One thing he’s always believed, being in the military isn’t only an honor but a duty. Why should his beliefs change simply because the world went dead-fish-belly up?

“35 East. We’re going to Dallas, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir. Goin’ to Dallas.” Hollander pulls the stubborn steering wheel to the right, guiding the bulky vehicle around a cattle truck full of dead steers and clouds of bloated, black flies.

Before long the way to Dallas is congested with the bodies of humans and animals alike. When you see this many bodies laying out like forgotten garbage, it’s a sign that you’re getting close to a major city. Out near smaller towns, it’s not so bad.

Connors reaches the radio. He tries different frequencies, even some old civilian frequencies the Army doesn’t use. But, no one answers from the satellite base.

“Bad sign,” says Connors.

“Maybe not, Major. Last Command didn’t answer either for a while,” says Hollander, not taking his eyes from the road as he navigates slowly around the bodies on the baking asphalt.

“No, we’re within range of the satellite base. They should be answering.”

“Maybe they’ve got radio troubles,” says Shaw.

Nature’s steadily reclaiming the highways and roads, and every other thing human beings ever built. Yellow-white clusters of ragweed work their way through the cracks in the pavement, breaking it up even more as the roots take hold.

“Look, there,” says Dr. Valentine. She still looks pale and thinner than when they left Camp Able, but for the first time, she’s wobbling on her feet. She’s pointing ahead, past the windshield, at a small settlement in the distance.

Tall chain-link fences surround what’s left of the satellite base. There are no guards posted, but there are people dressed in military uniforms milling around inside. They notice the Flying Fish almost immediately and greet it with waves and friendly cheers.

“They look happy to see us,” says Hollander.

“Keep going, keep going. Don’t stop here,” says Shaw, trying to wave away the stench, coming from the base. The sour and fetid odor wafts in through the open windows. He waves his hand back and forth but turns to placing a handkerchief over his nose instead. He screws up his face, overcome with the smell. No one likes it, but they don’t make such a big deal out of it as Dr. Shaw does.

Small fires are lit in barrels and thin, black streamers of smoke spiral into the air. The people inside are coming to the fence now, and the smell of filth and sickness strikes like a hammer on a blacksmith’s anvil, triggering Dr. Shaw’s gag reflex.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Shaw, there aren’t any trees you can hide behind here,” says Connors.

The front gate to the satellite base opens allowing them to roll inside. The gate is then closed, and it secured carefully behind them.

“Rose, I want you to get inside one of the storage cabinets and do not come out until I come for you. Now go on and stay very quiet. Do you understand?” says Dr. Valentine.

“Yes, I understand.”

Major Connors, Dr. Shaw, Dr. Valentine, and Sergeant Hollander exit from the ambulance and are immediately welcomed with open arms, halitosis, and rank body odor.

A small man, much shorter than any of the others, approaches through the tangle of living flesh and bones. He introduces himself straightaway. “Oh Lord, Lord. Welcome, welcome, one and all. My name is Ewing, and I am the leader of this small, but proud group.”

“I am Major Connors of the United States Army, Dr. Shaw, Dr. Merna Valentine, and Sergeant Hollander. The last time I heard, this base was under the control of the U.S. military. What happened to the soldiers who were stationed here?”

Ewing turns his head to the right, and to the left as if he were searching for the soldiers Connors mentioned. “Yes, it’s still under the control of the military. In fact, there’s one of the soldiers now.”

Connors spots a man of medium build, wearing fatigues that are several sizes too large for him. The name on the shirt says M. O’Riley. The only problem is, the man isn’t O’Riley, but he’s, sure enough, wearing his clothes. Connors fakes a passable smile and nods his head.

“Are we ever happy to meet you, folks,” says a thin woman with darkened circles and bags below her eyes.

“Welcome, Major Connors. Do you have any water, food, or medicine you can share? We’re in great need here,” says Ewing.

Connors is about to offer up some of the supplies when Dr. Shaw sidles up next to him. “I would strongly advise you not to do what you are about to do.”

“What the…?” Connors can’t believe the man who hid behind a tree, while two children and a woman were being attacked, is giving him advice, “And just what is it you think I’m about to do, doctor?” He whispers out of the corner of his mouth so no one else can overhear.

Shaw isn’t as subtle and speaks too loudly “We need every ounce of our food and water. We still have to get to Fort Worth, and if –” His comments cause a ripple upset to course through the group of survivors.

“–These people are desperate,” Connors interrupts, “Have you ever seen what desperate people will do for food and water? And you might want to look around. You’re fenced in with them. And if you care to take another look, Shaw, you might notice that they have snipers on the rooftops.”

Before Connors can repair the damage, Shaw has done, a throng of hysterical, emaciated people rush forward and grab them.

“If you don’t share with us then we’ll have to take everything,” says Ewing, rubbing his hands together. “Take them to the church!”

They’re taken to an old two-story building. The address is posted in large, black numbers above the entrance: 2424 Swiss Avenue. They are forced through the double front doors and find themselves in a room with a curved staircase. They’re wrangled, not unlike cattle, into a large, half-moon-shaped room. The second-floor balcony hangs suspended above them. A beautiful gothic chandelier hangs in the center of a tin-tiled ceiling. A stunning stained-glass window graced with the image of a woman is built into the wall. Light from the outside cascades through the glass lighting a podium which lies on its side. They’re in a church, and though the building is just a quarter of a century old, it smells of mildew, and of age, and of death.

One might believe, if they try hard enough, that the voices of ghosts can be heard singing. The apparitions of lost souls can be seen swirling and dancing, in time, to haunting melodies long forgotten.

Now, this holy place has become a sanctuary for the living dead; men and women, who are among the last survivors of an, almost complete, extinction event. And what these men and women have in store for them becomes crystal clear. A large area has been set up off the side of this large room, with no other purpose than the slaughter and preparation of meat. A makeshift slaughterhouse. Cannibals have decided their fate, and there seems to be no way out.

A small section of the wall has been knocked out, and a stovepipe snakes through it, to vent smoke outside. In the corner, near the women’s restroom, there’s a barbeque pit. A long stainless steel, food preparation table is adorned with butcher knives, small hand axes, fillet knives, and other odds and ends. From various points on the balcony railing hang half a dozen or more ropes and affixed to the end of each one are large, angry hooks, used for hanging human cuts of meat.

A man is moving from one end of the table to arrange his butcher’s tools, just so, for ease use. He’s an opposing giant. At one time he could have been a bodybuilder or a wrestler, but now fat has replaced the muscle which has disappeared, but not so of his strength. He steps heavily, his feet thudding as he walks, his fat jiggling. He lifts Hollander with one hand, by his neck. He’s able to do it so easily. Connors shouts at the man, pleading with him not to take the private, but to take him instead.

Hollander gasps for air, trying in desperation to pry the strong hands away, but the man maintains a grip like an iron collar around his throat. His face is turning a dusky shade of blue. Hollander swings his fists at the man, but the only blows he lands are ineffective.

The giant is the chef, dabbling in the underappreciated, and peculiar culinary art of cannibalism. He draws his club-like fist back and jack-hammers it into the sergeant’s face, multiple times. Hollander’s limp form sags, clinging to consciousness, but the fight has been taken out of him. The giant takes him to the wall where he secures leather straps across his chest and forehead. The man touches the edge of a sharpened knife to the sergeant’s throat., gliding it across, and a torrent of bright red blood blossoms from the carotid and cascades down the body of the dying soldier.

Dr. Valentine screams.

Connors curses the giant and threatens to kill him.

Shaw’s puking on his own shoes.

A filthy, scabies-ridden woman enters the room. “What? What is yew doing, son? Shit and fire! You know what Ewing told yew. The men taste gamey until you cut off their balls and let ‘em sit a spell. The testos-ter-oner’ whatever the hell makes ‘em taste rank. You’re s’posed to start with that woman first, dummy.”

Merna, overhearing the conversation, realizes she’s escaped death purely by accident. She was supposed to be in the sergeant’s place. Nausea slams into her guts like a fist. She clenches fighting the overpowering sensation of needing to empty her guts from both ends. She wretches, her taste buds register the sour taste of bile as it enters her mouth, hot and foamy. She spits it out onto the blood-encrusted carpet.

The woman’s inspecting the sergeant’s body and says, “Still, son, it’s a choice piece o’meat, and I’m starvin’. Now do the woman too, that’ll be enough to last us for some while. We’ll hang her in the smokehouse for a few days. She’ll taste goo-ood. I’ll go’and fetch Josiah. He can take the others to the holding-pen until we’re ready to process the rest of ’em.”

The woman’s heading toward the double doors so she can get “Josiah,” when an earth-shattering crash as the Flying Fish explodes through the front doors, sending her rag-dolling and sliding headlong across the floor and into a wall. She is unmistakably dead; her cranium caved in on one side, her eye popped out and yo-yoing on the end of the torturous optic nerve.

Rose bounces in the driver’s seat, barely able to control the ambulance. She can only see each time her head bounces high enough to clear the dashboard. The vehicle slides to a halt. “Dr. Valentine get in! Hurry, hurry.”

The giant, surprised by the sound of splintering wood and iron hinges being ripped from solid door casings, galumphs to where the disturbance is coming. Finding the woman dead, he howls in anguish. His face grows beet-red and he clenches his teeth together so forcefully that the cartridge grinds and pops. He spots Rose behind the wheel. He reaches around to his back pocket where he keeps a cleaver, determined to make her pay, in the most horrendous ways he can imagine, for the death of his mother. He yanks the cleaver from his pocket, and charges towards Rose. But, before he can reach her, he crashes to the ground. Connors has kicked his feet from beneath him. The major, seeing that the man is down grabs a meat hook from a nearby wall, reaches around the giant and pulls back, driving it deep into his eye and into his brain. The giant slumps to the floor, a dying gasp, and bloody spittle drools from his mouth.

The other cannibals, caring nothing about the giant or mother, run to the church. The thought of the only fresh meat they’ve had in weeks escaping is foremost on their minds.

Connors has no intention of leaving the sergeant’s body behind. He orders the doctors to get to safety before turning back to retrieve Hollander. There’s an uproar at the front of the building where the doors used to hang. The cannibals can’t get through, the ambulance is acting as a barricade. They are prying and pulling at the doors, but they are locked tight. They’re calling inside; shouts, cries, pleas, and curses. They are calling the names of the giant and his mother.

Shaw’s the first to reach the Flying Fish, he swings the passenger door open, and throws himself, unceremoniously, inside. Dr. Valentine is next to jump in, followed close behind by Connors. She can hear his heavy steps falling hard as if he’s carrying some great weight. She turns to see that the bloody body of the sergeant. It’s slung precariously over his shoulder, wrapped inside ornate drapery. Connors stops to reposition the soldier, so he doesn’t drop him.

Connors is calling out to her, but she can’t hear what he’s saying. Raised voices of angry man-eaters outside are rapidly growing louder. She concentrates on his lips, trying to make out what he is saying. He’s only telling her to hold the door open for him and to help him get Hollander’s body inside. There’s not much time, the cannibals are tearing at the gaping hole, making it bigger by the second. They’ll soon be in.

Connors lays the body down as gently as he can manage, and Dr. Valentine helps hoist the dead man into the ambulance. The passenger seat makes it hard to lift the weight of the body, but Rose helps by pulling at one of the man’s dangling arms.

“They’re in!” cries Dr. Shaw, who’s been watching through the ambulance’s rear doors.

Connors goes to his sidearm, but it’s too late. The first cannibal is nearly on top of him. From inside the ambulance, a rifle emerges from one of the ports and blows the cannibal’s brains from his head. Connors pops off a series of shots that drop four more. He scrambles into the ambulance slamming and securing the door behind him.

The murderous horde pound on the exterior paneling and windows of the vehicle. The glass holds. Soon they’ll make a hole, though, and come through. Connors unceremoniously grabs Dr. Shaw by his shirt and tosses him out of the way. The cowardly man pings like a billiard ball, coming to rest on the floor. Dr. Valentine’s still unloading her weapon on anyone unfortunate or stupid enough to come within range of the porthole.

Connors shouts, instructing Shaw. “Pick up a weapon and kill something or, so help me God, I’ll throw your ass outside, and let them have it as a consolation prize.”

Shaw, taking the threat as genuine, grabs a pistol and empties the entire clip out a porthole. Bodies begin to pile around the wheel wells

Rose vacates the driver’s seat, and Connors slams himself down into it.

“Hang on!” says Connors. He throws the ambulance into reverse and slams the accelerator to the floorboard. Wheels spin and slip as they tear into the dead cannibals under and around them. The smell of burning skin and hot tires floods the church. The flesh of the flesh-eaters caught under the wheels is reduced to particulate matter and rises in a plume of smoky-red mist. The ambulance jerks free, gaining traction and breaches the gaping hole, where the double doors were once hanging before Rose plowed through them like a god damned heroine. They escape from the slaughterhouse, crushing several of the hungry wretches on the way out.

Snipers open fire from the low rooftops of the base, pinging and piercing the Flying Fish. Small pops echo throughout the base, and puffs of smoke vomit from the ends of rifles and pistols.

“Up on the rooftops! Hit the snipers!” says Connors, pointing up at the top of the buildings. “We can’t afford to let them hit the engine or the tires.”

Dr. Valentine and Dr. Shaw dispatch the snipers and return to picking off the cannibals who are still giving chase. Connors has a plan and slows the Flying Fish to a crawl.

“What are you doing?” Why are we slowing down?” says Shaw.

Connors ignores him and continues to tap the breaks slowing even more, not so much as to make the pursuing crowd suspicious, but enough to allow most of the bastards to get closer and group up in a tight cluster.

“Rose, there’s a small, green, thing in my pack. I need you to get it and hand it to me. Don’t do anything else with it. Just hand it to me,” Connors says.

Rose slides to the pack and digs through it carefully, not knowing what dangerous things he might keep inside. A book slides from the pack to the floor. She doesn’t bother with it, no time. “I don’t see it,” she says.

“It’s in there. Look in the side pocket,” says Connors, pulling the steering wheel hard to the right to miss a cannibal who is running from a latrine to give chase.

She unbuckles and lifts the flap on the side. There she finds what Major Connors is asking for; three grenades rest like eggs in a nest. Carefully she takes one out and offers it to him.

“No, I’m driving. You have to do it. When I tell you, pull the pin and throw it into the center of the crowd. Do not drop it. If you drop that in here, they win, we lose. Got it?”

Rose nods. Her mouth is dry. Her sympathetic nervous system kicks into overdrive. Gripping the little egg in her hand makes her palm sweat.

“Swing the door open, and when I tell you, you pull the pin, you throw it, and then you close the doors as fast as you can,” says Connors.

Rose swallows hard. She opens the door and stares, wide-eyed, at the knot of evil humans closing slowly in on them. The ambulance gradually builds speed and pulls slightly ahead of the crowd. Connors shouts for her to toss it. She pulls the pin and rolls the tiny payload to the people; like a mother playing a game of catch with her demented offspring.

It bounces across the ground. The group stops and focuses on the bouncing object as it comes to rest in their midst. Before they realize what it is, it’s too late. The resulting explosion takes out the majority of the group, finishing the job that the apocalypse started. Those surrounding the grenade took the brunt of the blast, allowing Ewing and two others to get away.

Ewing runs as fast as his stunted legs will carry him, through an open field, then he stumbles. Something holds tight to his feet, not letting him go. He falls, scrambling, he tries to stand up and run, but he can’t. Then another cannibal falls. Then the third.

“Shaw, hand me the binoculars,” Connors says, pointing to the binocular case.

“What is it?” says Rose.

“Not sure,” says Connors.

Dr. Valentine’s peers through one of the gun ports, but finding it a bad angle, she goes to another to get a better look. “Something’s got them.”

Connors says nothing. Placing the binoculars to his eyes, it takes only a few moments of squinting, and moving them around, and making small adjustments to the focus, before he can get a clear view. “It’s the Turned. It’s Grubs. They’re pulling them down.” The tips of his eyelashes press against the glass lenses. He watches as the last of the cannibals are pulled underground to experience an uncertain, but most assuredly awful death.

Dr. Shaw is covered in sweat and shaking. Rose takes a seat on the floor. She’s shaking too. She feels a lump under her and reaches down, removing the thing she sat on. It’s a book. She sees the lettering and the strange symbols. It’s an ancient manuscript, it’s the book that slid from Major Connors bag when she was looking for the grenade. She reads the cover: Holy Bible. She holds it tightly to her chest. Maybe when things settle down again, if they ever do, she’ll read it. She misses reading The Wizard of Oz.

“We need to get the hell out of this place, right now, Major,” says Shaw.

“We have to bury, Sergeant Hollander, first,” says Dr. Valentine, referring to the private.

Connors nods in agreement. “Not here, not on this soil. He deserves better than to be buried in this cursed place. He goes with us, we’ll bury him somewhere nice, somewhere fitting. And I have my orders. Three crates in warehouse number six.” He looks down at Rose, and says, “Nice driving, kid. We owe you one.”

“You can’t be serious. She’s not a child, Major Connors. She’s a research subject, a demon with baby doll eyes, and quite poss—” Dr. Shaw is interrupted by the major putting a fist in his mouth. The next thing he realizes, he sprawled out on the floor. He finds himself looking eye to eye with Rose, who’s frightened and concerned for Dr. Shaw.

“I swear to you… as I live and breathe. If you show any more cowardly crap for the rest of the trip, I’ll tie you to a tree and ring the dinner bell, do you get me?” says Connors, waiting for an answer that doesn’t come. “I said do you get me?”

Shaw holds his mouth with one hand. Blood seeps from his nose and runs through the spaces between his fingers. He moves his jaw back and forth, examining it for a fracture. He’s foolish and spits blood on Connors boot, so Connors pulls his fist back again to land, no telling how many more hammering punches to the doctor’s face. Shaw flinches, draping his arms over his head to block the incoming punches.

Rose falls on top of Dr. Shaw, trying to save him. “No, please, don’t hurt him. Please, Major Connors, no. He can’t help what he is. He can’t. Just like Nettle couldn’t help it. Just like I can’t help what I am,” says Rose, pleading with Connors. She stays between the two men and protects the doctor with her small body and her hand raised in the air to defend the doctor.

Connors lowers his fist and shakes his head in disgust, not towards Rose, but towards Dr. Shaw. “Sad. She’s braver and more human than you’ll ever be,” he says. “Now pick yourself up and come with me. We’ve got a shipment to pick up.

Shaw stands. He looks down at Rose. He has been humbled by her self-sacrifice. Before he can help it, he says, “Thank you, Rose.”

They buried Sergeant Hollander on a hill, under a big tree, overlooking a little valley. Major Connors said some nice words over the grave, and the group moved onwards to Fort Worth.

Chapter Nineteen

“If you die before you wake, do not cry and do not ache.

Nothing is ever yours to keep, so close your eyes and go to sleep.”

-From a childhood Lullaby

Leo Montgomery is overweight; by a whole lot. His fat fingers wrap around a silver, fingerprint-congested, flask, with a regal moose emblazoned on the front. On the back, the engraved words reading: Alaska, God’s Country, arch across the top. He bought the flask for himself, three years ago, when he had traveled to Juneau to embark on a research expedition, to study flora and fauna of the region. He takes a generous swig and places the flask on a large wooden table until the next drink is needed.

Other tables, throughout the room, serve as dissecting tables for multiple specimens; Three Wicked Briars lay throughout Leo’s makeshift laboratory. They rest in various positions; supine, prone, and lateral, depending on the specimens being collected, or the anatomical areas of interest to be studied.

Also taking up residence in the room are a Hobble, and a Grub; a mud-encrusted creature that a drunken and desperate soldier dug out of the ground, and three smaller specimens; all children; each having their skulls cracked open and a leafy creature, soaking in a cloudy preservative, and placed in glass jars, sat beside each child.

Tubes and wires hang suspended from the ceiling, and retractors, which have been duct taped into place, hold open a variable mix of fleshy, leathery, exoskeletal, and endoskeletal structures at strategic points. The human remnants are intermingled with the Turned, in ways too complex to separate. He’s tried to isolate and excise the remaining human-hosts’ parts from that of the invading tissue many times. Knives, chisels, hammers, and hooks, used to open the creatures, and get a good look inside, lay scattered about. He enjoys his work, and it doesn’t bother him in the least that the soldiers here consider him to be somewhat of a mad scientist.

He reviews his notes. Takes another swig, while pulling on yellow dishwashing gloves. He prods, yet, another organ that he can’t identify. Maybe the liver… Grabbing a scalpel, he slices a thin sliver from the organ and places it on a glass slide. Taking time for another swallow of three-year-old scotch, before taking his cane and limping across the room to a microscope. It’s an old one… very old, and hard as anything to focus, but it will do until another one with a bit more power can be scavenged.

Leo wedges the sample under the mounting clips, feeling the slight grind of metal skidding across the thin, fragile glass slide. Bending to the eyepiece, he carefully adjusts the stubborn knob to focus in on what he’s seeing. Finally, the lens lowers into the perfect position, allowing him to observe the cells he’s prepared.

“Hey, Leo, those people from Camp Able are coming in,” says a man, sticking his head into the room. “The colonel says you should get out there on the double.”

“Thanks,” Leo says, not bothering to look up from the eyepiece, to see who it is, but it sounds like Private Bardy. leaning on his cane, he sighs, places his flask into a pocket, and works his way to the front gates.

Leo’s heard they’ve found affected children, something he’s seen more than his fair share of. Fort Worth has its own pockets of affected youth. He’s always interested in getting his hands on another one. The soldiers always bring back dead children. That’s not optimal for his research, and no matter how much he’s complained and begged, they always come back with a bullet hole in them. He needs a live specimen, at just the right age to finalize his work and confirm his theory. He’s so close.

As he limps, he drinks, he never gets a good buzz anymore. It’s a shame there isn’t enough scotch around, he would love to get drunk and forget the world as it has become.

Finally, he arrives at the guard house. An ambulance, looking like its been through hell and back twice, has arrived with the people from Able. The colonel and some of the others are out there, already meeting the new arrivals. Shaking hands and sniffing the woman’s scent. It’s been a long time since anyone has seen a woman around these parts, Leo chuckles to himself, wondering how much scotch it would take for her to help him forget how terrible a place the world has become. Probably a lot more than I have. A whole lot more.

“Hello, I’m Leo Montgomery.” Switching his cane from one hand to another, he offers a meaty paw for a shake.

“I’m Major Connors. This is Dr. Merna Valentine, and this…” disgust falls across Connor’s face like he just tasted an unwelcome flavor in his mouth, “…is Dr. Shaw.”

“Good, good, and where’s the creature? I understand you have a living specimen,” says Leo.

“She’s a child, not a creature,” says Dr. Valentine.

“That’s quite enough.” Connors doesn’t want to hear the debate anymore. He’s heard enough from everyone about what the girl is, or what the girl isn’t. If it hadn’t been for her, they’d probably all be hanging on hooks right now.

Leo’s eyes grow as wide as dinner plates and his lower jaw drops when he spots Rose. “Is that…?” He motions to Rose as she’s exiting at the rear of the ambulance. “I’ve never seen a live one before,” says Leo.

“Rose,” says Dr. Valentine, indicating for the girl to come and stand closer to her.

“Yes, this is Rose. We’re hoping you can help us find a…,” Shaw chooses his words carefully. He’s in hot enough water, “…a solution to our uh… our collective problem.”

Rose has never seen a person who’s as large as this man standing before her. He’s looking at her with a funny look on his face, it makes her skin crawl. She has a chill crawling up her spine, and it ends where the little hairs are standing up on the back of her neck.

The colonel and the green men are wandering off. The big man’s discussing his thoughts on how they should proceed, with the doctors. She moves closer to Dr. Valentine’s side, but something odd happens, Dr. Valentine looks down at her and steps away; not much, but it was enough for Rose to notice. Not knowing what to do she just stands where she is, feeling exposed and small.

“Can I have a look at your research, doctors? What have you got so far?” says the big man.

“There was an attack at Camp Able. We weren’t able to collect anything before we were forced to leave,” says Shaw.

“It all happened so fast,” says Dr. Valentine.

“We’ll start with a blood draw and a few of the less invasive tests, to begin with,” says Leo turning and leading the way to his laboratory.

Rose doesn’t want to be afraid, but she’s very afraid.

“The blood is very interesting, there is an element I’ve only seen in the pediatric, less mutated population. It’s thick and sticky like syrup,” says Shaw.

“It’s red, that’s where the similarity ends. There’re some human components remaining, but it’s being replaced with something else. Gradually acclimating the host’s body to the mutation,” says Leo.

“I figure there’s a plant-component,” says Shaw.

“And, you’d be correct,” says Leo.

“It’s basically sap. The children have a large volume of dissolved sugars and minerals. Sap. There’s also traces of chlorophyll in all the Turned, not just the children. Whatever the Turned are, there’s one indisputable matter. They’re plant-based lifeforms. Or rather, human-plant hybrids.”

They arrive at the lab, and Rose is led to a large chair. The big man tells her to take a seat. It’s so big that she feels it’s swallowing her up. She loves it because it feels soft and comfortable, but it smells like the big man, and so it doesn’t smell too good.

The big man has a metal tray, just like they had at Camp Able, complete with tourniquets and tubes and sharp things to poke into a child.

“Just a pinch now.”

“It’s okay, I’m used to it,” Rose says, and she holds out her arm.

The big man slides the needle into the vein. He doesn’t use a glass tube to suck up her blood like they did at Camp Able. Instead, he just drains some of it into a small, round dish.

She tries to focus on something else. Letting her eyes dance across the room, and roam the haphazard layout of pictures, and diagrams, and notes pinned and taped to the walls until she finds a photograph which makes her forget about the stick of the needle. But it’s the image that makes her breath catch in her throat. It’s the flying machine. The same one that Dr. Shaw showed her once before. Except in this photo, it’s not flying anymore. It’s sprawled out on the ground. Most of it is laying in an immense chasm, in which it crashed. The symbols, the ones she couldn’t read before, are taking shape in her brain. They lift off the page to meet her eyes, the alien language finally making sense to her. The words indicate the name of the craft. The best translation in English would be Whorl of Leaves. She opens her mouth, wanting to tell Dr. Shaw about the photo, but the big man says something first.

“There now, we’re done with that.” He wipes her skin with a cotton ball dipped in alcohol and bends her arm for her, to stop the puncture from bleeding. He takes the round dish to the microscope, places some of her blood on a slide, and calls the doctors over to have a look. Then curiously he offers to let her have a look too. She approaches the instrument cautiously. Standing on the tips of her toes, she very carefully gazes into the eyepiece, blinking her eye a few times to focus. She’s gentle and avoids touching the microscope with her hands. She’s never seen her blood up close, like this, before. It’s so interesting. She laughs out loud in the excitement of seeing the blood cells, sluggishly, crossing the slide.

The big man touches the blood smeared on the plate with the tip of a pencil, teeth marks pressed into the soft yellow paint. He pulls the tip away from the glass, and the blood stretches like molasses.

“How close are you to knowing what makes them tick?” says Shaw. “Not just the children, but all of them.”

“What is it you’re really asking?” says Leo.

“What I’m asking is, is there an off button on the things that we can punch at the same time?”

“Ah, great minds… Dr. Shaw. A kill switch… Not that I’ve found yet, no. At least not anything that can be used as a weapon of mass destruction and not take us out with it. I’m thinking whatever the answer is, it’ll entail taking them out as groups. Sorting them out, kind by kind, discovering a common factor which will destroy each unique manifestation. I’m closer to discovering the answer to dealing with the children than any of the others. I know I’m close. I’m very close. The answer is right in front of my nose. I may not be able to see it just yet, but I can smell it. We need to perform some tests on her. I haven’t had the pleasure of working with a living specimen. Of course, unfortunately, we’ll have to eventually perform more invasive testing, I’m afraid.”

Rose, hearing the big man, looks to Dr. Valentine, hoping she won’t let them do anything to hurt her, but Dr. Valentine is a million miles away.

It’s Dr. Shaw who oddly enough moves to stand in between Leo and Rose. “Of course. We can start with the less invasive tests, but nothing too advanced should be done without my knowledge or approval first. “

“Of course, Dr. Shaw, you have my word. I expect you two must be very hungry. You can go to the mess hall and get something to eat. I’ll start working with her.”

Chapter Twenty

“Childhood should be carefree, playing in the sun; not living a nightmare in the darkness of the soul.”

-Dave Pelzer, A Child Called “It”

The first good thing she’s had to eat in weeks. Bread and beans with a small bit of pork and some old cookies, but Dr. Valentine can’t make herself do more than pick at the food. She doesn’t bother to look up when someone sits across from her.

“What’s going on with you?”

It’s Dr. Shaw, and she’s too tired to care about how she feels about the man.

“You didn’t even so much as flinch when Leo told us what would have to be done with Rose.”

“I can’t stop seeing it.” Still not looking at him, she smashes her beans with the tip of her fork until they’re rendered into a light brown paste.

“What’s “it”?”

“The thing you dug out of Lily’s brain.”

Shaw remains quiet, staring at her. She looks up. Her eyes redden. She’s too dehydrated to cry, but she can feel the heat of the absent tears gathering behind her eyes. She expects him to gloat. “And what’s going on with you? I saw you move to stand in front of her.”

“I don’t know. Ever since the satellite base, when she stood in front of me to keep Connors from beating me to a pulp. I just… she’s not like the others.”

“I want to believe that. But what is there left to save?”

“We’ve been through a lot. We are exhausted and hungry. Try to eat. You’ll feel better.”

“When did you start caring about anyone other than yourself?”

“When did you stop caring?”

“I haven’t stopped caring about anything. Especially Rose, but I must come to terms with this, and face indisputable proof. It may not be possible to save her, or anyone else.”

They were quiet for a while. Dr. Shaw finishes his plate and goes back to the serving line for seconds. When he sits down again Dr. Valentine, who has barely managed to eat more than a few bites of her food says, “You were right.”

“About what?”

“I did the right thing. I know it now. Savannah would have been like Rose.” Dr. Valentine’s eyes brim with tears, only a single drop runs down her cheek. She doesn’t even have the strength to wipe it away.

“Rose has done nothing to hurt us. In fact, it’s been quite the opposite. She’s shown qualities that only the innocence of a child can. She’s more human than most… including me. You were right, too, you know?”

“What?”

“Rose is different than the others.”

“I’m not sure I can…”

A soldier interrupts Dr. Valentine. “Dr. Shaw? Dr. Valentine?”

“Yes,” they say together.

“Mr. Montgomery requests your presence in the lab.” After delivering the message, the man spins and walks toward the serving line.

Dr. Valentine shrugs her shoulders and bites her lower lip.

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s found something,” says Shaw, as if he read her mind.

Am I wrong? Can she be saved? What hope does she or any of the affected have now? She follows Shaw to the lab building. She stops in her tracks. Is he actually holding the door for me? She forces an anemic smile. He follows behind her. “Uh, thank you.” She tries to forget this gesture. Trivial niceties mean nothing. It’s not hard, her stresses and despair flood back into her thoughts like the return of the high tide.

“You wanted to see us?” she says.

Leo is beaming ear to ear. “I have it. It’s been here all along. But I needed a live subject to be sure. It was here the whole time…”

Dr. Valentine feels a small thread of hope tugging at her insides. “What did you find?”

“What is it? The answer? A way to…,” Shaw realizes Rose is listening and doesn’t want to say anything to frighten her. “… a way to resolve… the issue?”

“Okay,” says Leo. He parts Roses hair which has grown longer since leaving Camp Able, revealing the girl’s scalp. There’re small green threads running along it. “I’m not entirely certain, it will take a bit more time to be sure, but rest assured…”

“Leo, just tell us,” says Dr. Shaw.

A loud bell is clanging outside. Someone is hammering on it. Dr. Valentine runs to a nearby window and looks outside.

“That’s the alarm bell, something’s happening,” says the big man. He quick-limps to the window, standing next to Dr. Valentine. “We better go check it out.”

“Rose, come with us,” says Dr. Shaw.

Outside the street is thrumming with activity. Soldiers running, yelling at one another. They are carrying rifles and pistols. Some are toting heavy rucksacks full of ammunition and other items for battle. Tall men are dressed all in red, standing at the end of a long and narrow road. They aren’t doing anything. They’re standing there, immobile, yet threatening, dripping with malice. Watching. Waiting. Chests and shoulders heaving in anticipation.

Behind the gates, the soldiers are taking shelter behind sandbags and cement-filled metal drums, mountains of tires, and a derelict bus of which the windows are used as gun ports.

The Colonel and Major Connors have taken positions, allowing them to view the enemy and determine the strength of this new type of Turned. They shout commands to the soldiers who are following the orders exactly and without question.

Rose is watching the men who are dressed in red. She knows that they are not really men dressed in red, it only just looks like it. They are made this way. Much stealthier than the Doldrums, more cunning than the Wicked Briars, and more ravenous than Grubs. Their reddish color comes from the hard armor that has sprouted from the corpses of the remnants of human bodies, of which only shreds remain. Snakes shedding the old skin, revealing the brightness of their venomous nature in the rebirth of what they have become.

Standing behind the red army is a tall figure, calculating her next move. She calls out something to her red men. Rose can’t hear what she is saying, but each time she speaks, her army does something in response. They’re following every order she gives them. Rose suddenly realized who she might be because thousands of years ago someone wrote about her in the Holy Bible. Satan. The red men are her legion of demons. They’ve come to collect the souls of all the sinners of the world.

She shouts out some important command. Rose can hear it, carried to her on the slight dusty draft, floating down the old bricked-paved street. The army parts like steel doors opening to either side and through the throng, remnants of human beings, genetically altered, comes a strange sight. A red soldier, different than the rest. His appearance, heavily altered, and he is unique unlike the others, who all look as if they were cast from the same mold. Into his hard exoskeleton, there are carvings; a series of symbols and shapes that are unfamiliar, yet familiar all at the same time. They fill Rose’s heart with dread. He carries a very long pike in one hand. He’s riding out on a Wicked Briar, harnessed with old scraps of leather and chains. He’s coming closer and approaches at a galloping speed, making the soldiers nervous.

“Hold fire. Only fire on my orders,” says the Colonel, as he strides cautiously, to the perimeter fence.

Connors sidles up next to him. They wait until the red rider pulls up on the reins of his steed and skids to a stop, kicking dust and debris, until he’s fewer than seven yards from the perimeter fence. The major and colonel are stoic and wait for the red messenger to make the first move. The red man is curious about the base and the humans in it. He tilts his head from right to left, as if he’s considering how small and fragile the humans before him are.

Rose thinks that maybe the red man doesn’t remember being human at all, but the remnants of a human corpse are still embedded into his frame, clearly seen in the lower pair of arms. The red man’s upper pair are much stronger and present as armored sleeves and gauntlets, just like the knight in the Lady Guinevere Cigarettes advertisement.

Then the red rider addresses them. It is a blend of a faintly human voice and overlaid with a stronger voice that seethes with disgust, hatred, and malice for the trivial creatures before him. The Wicked Briar shifts impatiently.

“I am sent…,” says the red man. He searches for the right words. It probably hasn’t spoken the human words in which it used to be so fluent for a long time, “She who rules commands you to give the queen to us. If you do, we will leave you in peace.”

Rose wonders who this queen is that the Turned is speaking of. She looks up to Dr. Valentine; she must be a queen. Perhaps that’s why Rose is so drawn to her. Dr. Valentine is beautiful and strong, just like a queen should be. Just Like Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, or Esther, in the Bible, who risked her own life to save her people.

“I don’t know what you mean. We don’t have any ‘queen’ here,” says the colonel. “What are your intentions?”

Then, without warning, the red man launches his pike through the air. Rose is shoved hard. Her light body soars through the air and lands roughly on the ground. Dr. Valentine and Dr. Shaw land on top of her, covering her body with their own. And when Rose looks she can see, the red man’s pike is stuck into the big man, and it’s sticking out the other side of him.

“MEDICS!” shouts Connors, rushing over to help Leo.

“You have until the sun rises to give her to us. If you do not, everyone here will die.” The red man yanks on the reins, pulling them hard to the side. The Wicked Briar is a stubborn mount, and reluctantly moves back the way they came, and just like that, the red army withdraws and disappears. It was as if they had never been there at all.

“They killed the big man,” says Rose, pointing at Leo’s impaled body.

Dr. Shaw gets up and runs to help Leo. Dr. Valentine helps Rose to stand. She can feel the woman running her fingers across the top of her head, and the feeling is inebriating, much like the first time she experienced the effect of the sun on her youthful body. Except… when Dr. Valentine pulled her fingers across her scalp, Rose could feel small threads where the woman’s fingers caressed the skin.

Rose had never felt that sensation when she would touch anywhere on her own body. She reaches up and touches the spots on her head. They are all covered by her hair. Small bumps; rash-like, have erupted from the skin and fibrous thin vines wind through her hair. She knew they were growing there, but she never said anything to anyone because she was afraid of what it could mean. The big man seemed to think that whatever is growing there is important.

The big man’s body is taken away, leaving a dark pool of blood where he fell. The colonel orders that the men double up on guard duty so that there are more people watching in case the Turn decide to pay them another visit. He orders snipers to take positions high up on the rooftops.

The Colonel reminds Rose of Major Connors in a lot of ways. They seem to be cut from the same cloth. Much like brothers would behave. The Colonel also reminds her of Dr. Shaw treated her before, at Camp Able; like a thing instead of a child.

“Private Lindsey, Corporal Peters,” the colonel calls, and two men come running up. “Escort the Turned to the brig. No one knows what that thing could do to us in here. I don’t mean to make myself comfortable with the thought of sleeping with a dragon runnin’ loose.”

“It’s okay, I’ll be fine. But, can you come visit me?” Rose says to Dr. Valentine, and she turns to Dr. Shaw. “Do you remember the picture you showed me of the thing over the city?”

“Yes, Rose, I remember. What about it?” says Shaw.

“I saw it again.”

“Where?”

“It’s hanging on the wall in the big man’s lab, but it’s a different photograph.”

Private Lindsey and Corporal Peters are leading her away when she turns back and says, “It’s laying on the ground. I think it fell from the sky.”

“Thank you, Rose. I’ll take a look at it,” Shaw calls after her. Watching the little girl being led away, he returns to Leo’s lab.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer-both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.”

-Bram Stoker, Dracula

“That was some block party,” says Connors, “I wish we’d known your neighbors were throwing a welcoming…”

“…We’ve never seen them before, and it’s not a coincidence, major, you were tailed, it’s just that simple” says Colonel Collier.

Connors can’t understand, no, he doesn’t want to face the fact that he was tailed, but how could it be. The spear in the tire? No, he thinks, that was days ago. Nothing could have followed them that far and kept pace on foot. Then he understands. “The spear.”

“What?” Dr. Valentine says.

“It was a spear that blew our tire. It can’t be a coincidence,” says Connors, he stops trying to rationalize away the obvious truth. They were followed.

“Hell, and high water. Have you ever seen anything as all fire scary as that bunch?” the colonel says, his nerves shaken. He wipes sweat from his brow.

“Gentlemen… and ma’am,” the colonel acknowledges Dr. Valentine. “Let’s take this inside.”

“Unbelievable,” says Connors, he dusts the seat of one of the meeting room chairs with his hand, even though it isn’t all that dusty, and sits down on it. He replays the tape in his head. He measures it out frame by frame, breaking it down so he can analyze it.

Dr. Valentine takes one of the available chairs in the meeting room. A soldier brings in a pot of coffee, not the insta-shit like back at Camp Able, but a real pot of steaming, black, carried on the back of a burrow’s ass, coffee. A little plate of food is brought in too, containing mostly fresh vegetables and something which looks like pulled-pork, and some stale crackers.

Moments later Dr. Shaw pushes into the room, and he’s holding something; a piece of paper, in his hands. He hands it to the major.

“What is his colonel?” says the major turning the front of the photograph to his old friend and now, a superior officer. The same man, that years before, he jumped in front of and took a bullet for. It wasn’t during a battle, but rather a bar fight, while on shore leave.

“It’s the alien ship. The one they shot down over L.A., what’s left of it. I’ve wanted to get up there and see what’s in that friggin thing. Was plannin’ on goin’, but frankly, this base doesn’t have the combined firepower of a bottle rocket.”

“I don’t know how us being here is going to change that. We only have half a shoebox full of things that go boom, ourselves,” says Connors.

“That’s what you think,” counters Collier. He grins like a schoolboy who got a good long look up a school girl’s skirt. “Private,” he says to a man sitting at the table. “Go out and have a couple of the others help you bring in the cases that the major liberated from Fort Worth.” The Colonel walks to a wooden roll-top desk and gathers several rolls of tattered maps. He searches them to find the one he’s looking for. He takes a thumb tack and pins one corner to the wall. He looks for more tacks to secure the corners to the cheap wall paneling. Not finding any more, he reaches for a roll of clear tape pushed to the back of the roll top and pulls enough tape free to secure the last three corners revealing the coffee-stained map of Arkansas. Someone had previously placed a large red ‘X’ to mark the estimated place that the spacecraft crashed.

“That’s a long way from here,” says Dr. Valentine, looking defeated. “We lost so many men just getting here. Oh god, it can’t be that far.”

“It is what it is,” says Connors. He glances in her direction. She looks ashen. She holds her injured hand and lowers her head. She looks as bad as he feels. He doesn’t disagree with her, it’s a long way away. But he keeps it to himself. Unless the colonel has a card trick or two up his sleeve, or a convoy of tanks sitting around somewhere, the chance of getting to the ship will be next to impossible.

The door to the meeting room opens, and a couple soldiers are carrying in one of the long crates the Major brought back. A few other soldiers are coming in behind them carrying other crates as well.

“What’s in those?” says Connors.

“Just you wait, Major, just you wait,” says the colonel, moving over to pry open one of the wooden boxes, but to his chagrin, the nails holding the lid on were pried out and bent, some missing altogether. “What… what,” he says, it’s not a question, but just words. He removes seven nails that are loosely holding the lid on. He throws open the lid, nearly hitting Dr. Shaw in the face. Inside there is an assemblage of rusty forks, spoons, paring knives, and other cooking utensils, they’re covered in blood which has dried to a deep red lacquer, and rust.

The soldiers take over and crack open the other crates. They open far too easy. Inside, the crates are stuffed with garbage, just like the first crate had been. A soldier nearest to the door says, “Hey, colonel this here box is nailed tight.”

The Major calls for a hammer or something to take out the nails. Nervous sweat blossoms from his pores and streams down his face. There’s no hammer, but there is a small pry bar, it will do. He takes it from a soldier and digs the teeth of it into the soft, brown, wood of the crate. It takes some work to pry the lid up, and then he slams it down to reveal enough of the nails to pry them out. He throws each to the ground. The lid can be removed now, but he stands up and takes several deep breaths. He looks at the assemblage of people in the meeting room, too nervous to really focus on their faces. He bends down to where the crate rests on the floor. He digs his fingers under the lip of the lid and lifts it just a little at first, but it’s not enough to see inside, then he lifts it, and it falls to the floor.

Inside the crate is something that Major Connors recognizes instantly. It’s a long hollow pipe with a small, round handle protruding from the bottom. And beside it, a small elongated mushroom-shaped device is pressed gently into the foam padding surrounding both objects.

“What is that?” says Dr. Valentine.

“That is a whole-lotta-hurt,” says Connors.

“This here’s what you call a Bazooka, ma’am,” says Collier. “A certified tank killer.”

“Is there just the one bullet?” says Dr. Valentine.

The colonel looks at Connors, hoping they found more.

“No, there weren’t any other crates,” says Connors. “We took out everything that was in that godforsaken place. It was just these few crates.”

“Okay, so what are we going to do?” says, Shaw. “They can’t have Rose. How are we going to keep them from taking her?”

The room is silent. Connors is moving things around in his head. Placing them together to see how they fit. Then, he takes them apart again and tries new pieces until the answer comes to him. “Colonel, when we drove into Fort Worth, we passed a large industrial factory with hydrogen storage tanks. Do you know if those tanks are still full?”

“We’ve had no need for hydrogen, so except for scavengin’ a few supplies in the beginnin’, we haven’t been back there,” says the colonel.

“Do you know if the hydrogen storage tanks are full?” the major says.

“What do you have in mind,” asks Dr. Valentine.

“Well if the queen wants the girl so much, I say we hand her over,” says Connors.

“What? No,” pleads Dr. Valentine.

“No, we can’t do that.” Dr. Shaw agrees. It’s one of the few times that Dr. Shaw and Dr. Valentine have ever agreed on anything.

Connors asks for something to write with and some paper. A soldier hands him a worn-down pencil and a crinkled piece of notebook paper. He draws out the hydrogen plant on the paper, what he can recall from memory, the rest is guesswork, but it’s enough to get his idea across.

“If those things out there, want her so badly, they won’t stop until they have her. They know we came here in the Flying Fish, right? So, if we were to set a trap at this location…” says Connors, pointing to the place on the map where the hydrogen factory is located. “…using the right bait, then just maybe, we can take some of them down… if not all of them. And hopefully, we can get the queen.”

“I don’t understand,” says Dr. Valentine. “How is getting them to follow us to the plant going to help? They’re stronger than us. They will kill us and take Rose. You can’t hope to win a battle with them. They outnumber us at least five to one.”

“I don’t think a battle is what the Major has in mind,” says Shaw.

Dr. Valentine looks to Shaw and back to the major, then to the bazooka. “Surely, you can’t be serious?”

“Tonight, I’ll take that little gem,” says Connors, nodding his head toward the bazooka, and try and to get them to follow me to the plant. When I get’em inside… well, you’ll know if I’m successful or not. The explosion will be more than impressive, to say the least. As soon as you see that they’re following me, you get the kid and get out of here. Head toward the ship and see if there is anything there that could possibly help to fix this messed up world.”

“It’s a death sentence. You’ll never make it out,” says Dr. Valentine. The look on her face is one of deep concern and sickened terror.

“No, it’s not a sure thing, but if I can draw them in, and then get clear in time, I should be able to take the shot from a safe distance. It’ll be damn tricky, but I think I can do it,” says the major.

“It’s a good plan,” says the colonel, “except for one thing.”

“What’s that, sir?” says Connors.

“You’re not the ranking officer here. I am,” says the colonel, tapping himself on his chest with his thumb. “Are you tryin’ to make me look like a slacker in front of my men, Major?

“No, sir… but… um,” says Connors.

“But um, nothin’,” says the colonel. “We have the plan, but there will be one small change. I’ll be doing it, and you’ll go to the crash site.”

“But, sir,” says Connors.

“But nothing Major Connors, that’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

The sun seemed to fall faster than naturally possible. There wasn’t much time to make a solid plan, so they decide that they can’t take a chance and wait any longer. The Colonel loads up the payload into the back of the Flying Fish, while the soldiers busy themselves making scarecrows to closely resemble both Dr. Shaw and Dr. Valentine, and a smaller one that is supposed to look like Rose. The place the decoys into the old ambulance so they can be seen through the windows.

Another vehicle is brought from somewhere in the compound. Connors likes this better than the Flying fish because it runs quieter and because of the reinforced grating welded over the windows and the large, flat, steel plates placed over the wheels to protect them from another well-aimed spear.

“Showtime, Major,” comes the voice of the colonel through the radio. “Remember to give me enough time to get the Turned into the plant before you move out.”

Connors lifts the mic and squeezes the button to respond. “Will do. Good luck.”

It’s quiet, too quiet at the soldiers open the main gate just wide enough for the Flying Fish to slide through. Men are posted up high and searching the perimeter for any movement. Someone calls out “No sign of hostiles.” And Connors watches as the colonel builds speed to draw the attention of the Turned army. The old ambulance rattles as it builds up speed and travels across the bricked streets.

At the outermost edge of the binocular’s lenses, Connors catches a splash of dark crimson, which grows like a puddle of blood against a moonlit sky. “Colonel, movement at your 2 o’clock.” Connors thumbs the dial in the center of the binoculars to focus in on the crimson heard moving toward the Flying Fish as it hurries onward to the hydrogen plant.

Something in Connors’s gut tells him something is off. Something doesn’t feel right, but he’s not sure what. His attention is distracted by the crackling voice of the colonel, who radios back to say he has eyes on the enemy. He’s going to get the herd to follow him in through the plant’s entry gates, and when he does, that’ll be Connor’s signal to get moving. Connors responds that he understands and pushes down on the clutch with his left foot. He takes the parking brake off, and the truck rolls forward a few inches toward the front gate of Last Command.

“Get ready, Major. When I’m in, you go,” says the colonel, dropping the mic to the floor of the Fish.

Connors hands the binoculars to Dr. Valentine and tells her to let him know when the Turned are all inside the plant. She nods her head, showing him that she understands. Then she tells him that the Colonel’s lead isn’t as large as it should be and that the Red Army has closed much of the gap. Moments later, Dr. Valentine tells the major that it’s safe to move out and that all the Turned are inside, but she also sounds very concerned because the colonel didn’t come out the other side of the plant, as was the plan.

Connors can’t help him now. Whatever happens, they must get Rose to the wreck site. He turns to see the small girl. She has squeezed herself into a gloomy corner. She looks frightened, and she’s gripping that old bible in her sweaty little hands. He turns forward and puts the truck into motion, squeezing through the gap in the gate just as the colonel had done a few minutes ago.

The Flying Fish bounces and shudders on the bricks as they slide beneath the balding tires. The colonel presses the accelerator to the floor. He finds himself hoping that there are no surprises waiting inside.

I hope this works, he thinks. His palms sweat, and he turns for an instant to reassure himself that the payload is safe and sound in the back of the ambulance where he loaded it. Glancing at the rearview mirror, he notices that the herd is moving faster than he would have believed possible. He can’t see the queen. Where are you? Surely, she’s in there amidst the cluster of demons blazing a trail after him. They’re coming after the girl, or so they think. The colonel lowers the sun visor to admire the photo he taped there, his wife and children, all long gone, casualties of the war between human beings and the Turned. He runs his index finger across the faded photograph and his eyes flood with tears. It’s been so long he was beginning to think he’d forgotten how to cry.

She and her kind, her inferiors, stand quietly swaying in the moonlit evening on a planet that she will rule. Her mind is organized chaos. When she dreams, she dreams of death. Not hers, but the death of those who are not like her or her kind. The moonlight dances off her armor. She used to be like the pale soft things, the human things, but she has forgotten almost all of what it meant to be human, and she hates the tiny parts, the leftover scraps of her physiology that used to be human.

The human soldiers cannot be trusted to do as she wishes. She owes them nothing, nor they, her. They are at odds. Maybe the soldiers use the word: war. But she doesn’t think of it as war, as much as she thinks of it as a systematic eradication of all weak, human, life. A cleansing.

She understands that some change has happened to her and the Turned who are like her, changing them from disgusting soft things into something else. To her mind, it is the way it must be. In her mind, the evolution of the human being must eventually come to this. If not, then why has she become the powerful creature that she has evolved into. She is ashamed of the memories of her human past that even now slip away from her like grains of pollen carried on the wind. She and her brood will rise above all others and take the lead as only nature, no, as only evolution could have intended.

She calls her generals. They congregate around her like an evil cloak laid upon the shoulders of evil itself. She is a great queen, she knows this. But, what do her kind think of her? Do they feel she is great, or do they follow her out of fear? She decides that she doesn’t care why. One reason is as good as the other. She only cares that they do as she bids, without question. She must be smarter and wiser than the humans. She will wait for them to make the first move and she finish victorious, no matter what deceit the humans may attempt.

She is discussing with her kind her plans when a scout comes to her to inform her of movement at the human camp. As she had surmised; the small beings will try to escape. She moves to a place where she can see a vehicle that carries the little queen with a second vehicle waiting behind the first. They are trying to leave, and she cannot let this happen. Should the little queen mature, and be able to have offspring, it would jeopardize the future of the Red Queen and her army. She senses a deception and works to put a plan together. There isn’t much time to act. She readies her army and puts her plan into action.

The Colonel whips the Flying Fish into the parking area of the plant and bust through several barricaded areas. He drives toward the large hydrogen storage tanks with a legion of the red army on his heels. He needs to clear the plant and exit the other side in time to take his shot. The resulting explosion will vaporize him if he’s too close.

He slams the brake down, pressing it so hard to the floor that he’s afraid it will snap in half. His escape route is directly in front of him, but something else is waiting. The queen and her soldiers are there blocking his exit, while the others close in behind him. He is surrounded and trapped. Mere moments separate his life from violent death.

He knows what must be done. He switches his foot from the brake to the accelerator. He swings the Flying Fish around plowing overs some of the Turned. Others try to latch on to the vehicle but are dragged along with it. The colonel pulls up to the front of a massive hydrogen tank. He grabs the bazooka. It’s loaded and ready to fire. He exits the vehicle, nearly falling. The soldiers close in on him, sneering, screeching, and drooling. They reach for him. He closes both eyes, and pulls back on the trigger, sending his missile into the tank.

Rose crawls across the floor of the big truck. Old blankets are stacked in piles, along with some boxes of food and ammunition. The back of the truck has a large rectangular window which has a steel grating covering it. She moves slowly toward it. Rose uses her fingers to reach up and grab the lip of the window. She rises slowly to look back toward the base. Rose expects to see the devil following after her, but no, she and her army of lost souls have gone into the plant. No one is following. A brilliant flash fills the cabin, and a split moment later a loud explosion causes the ground to quake. Dr. Valentine sits up as straight as a board trying to look out of the rear window, but she must close her eyes to protect them from the glare. Rose squeezes tightly against Dr. Valentine, and for a moment she is blinded by the sudden flash. She can feel the truck picking up more speed. The major floors the accelerator pedal and takes them as far away from Fort Worth as fast as he can.

When Rose opens her eyes again, she finds Dr. Valentine looking out the window at the massive glowing cloud of explosive debris. Rose thinks to herself. Goodbye, Devil. Everyone is very quiet now, and the truck races on toward Arkansas.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“It’s a fitting punishment for a monster. to want something so much—to hold it in your arms — and know beyond a doubt you will never deserve it.”

-Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath, and the Dawn

Rose doesn’t have to ride in the back anymore, so now she’s sitting in the passenger seat. She loves to watch the trees as they pass by in a hazy blur and the way the roads twist and turn as they travel through the mountains. The major thought it would be safe enough to roll the windows down because the grates over the windows would keep anything bad from getting in, so she presses her face against the grating and feels the breeze blowing on her face.

The major made it seem like he was letting her do it, so she could look outside, and get some fresh air, but Rose thinks it’s more likely that with the vines growing in her hair, that he wants to be able to shoot her if she were to become dangerous. Right after they left Fort Worth, Rose noticed changes on her arms and legs, which have started to sprout vines too, and she’s kept it to herself. Still, Rose makes the most of the offer to sit in front and look outside. She would prefer to believe that the major is being nice to her, just to be nice to her. Either way, she gets to sit in the front seat.

“We’re coming to a town, we’ll need to get some gas and see if we can wrangle up something to eat,” says Connors, without taking his eyes from the old logging road they’re traveling on.

Dr. Valentine and Dr. Shaw are muttering back and forth to each other, but Rose can’t hear what the conversation is about, because of the wind blowing in through the window. Whatever it is, Dr. Valentine isn’t happy about it. Occasionally their voices rise and fall as one or the other gets angry. And once or twice Rose thought she heard her name mentioned. Rose turns to the major and smiles. He doesn’t smile back exactly, but he doesn’t give her a dirty look either. Weariness and worry cover his face, thicker than the layer of dirt and sweat that’s on it.

Rose doesn’t even know how many days it’s been any more since they left Fort Worth. But it’s been a lot. She wonders if the colonel made it out of the hydrogen plant alive. She wonders if the Devil and her followers were blown up. Everyone is probably thinking the same thing, but no one is saying it out loud. The only thing for sure is there’s been no sign that they were followed. So, Rose takes it as a pretty sure sign… the Devil has returned to Hell and taken all her scary monsters with her when she went. Rose notices though that everyone keeps looking back the way they came for a glimpse of anything red.

Rose feels the breeze dancing across her face and ears. It makes her hair and, for the lack of a better word, her vines, lift lightly in the updraft. Small buds are beginning to form along the length of them. Occasionally, she’ll feel of them and give them a gentle pinch, and she can feel everything she does to the vines and the buds.

She soon tires of watching the scenery pass by, and goes back to reading, and finally finishes, the last page of the Bible. There is only one possibility, she realizes, we are living in the time of the Book of the Revelation. What else can explain all the monsters?

They don’t make it to the town before the gas tank is drained, but hope is on the horizon. Rose can see, off in the distance, a house, and an old barn. An orange tractor sits just outside of the barn, maybe they can get some gasoline from it, or the car parked not far from the house.

“It’s a side trip, I suppose,” says Connors, reluctantly. He reaches to open the rear doors and leans into the back of the truck to collect two five-gallon gasoline cans. He checks his sidearm and lifts a rifle, slinging it over his shoulder. He shoves an empty can toward Dr. Shaw who reaches out to take it from the major. He follows the major closely as he leads the group toward the farmhouse. They hug the side of the road, moving cautiously along the thicket of tall pines growing like mighty titans.

Suddenly, Major Connors pulls Dr. Valentine closer into the cover of the trees. Seeing this, Dr. Shaw grabs Rose, pulling her with him, following the others into the tree line.

“What do you see major?” Dr. Shaw says.

“The truck’s moving,” Connors says.

Rose looks out from under Dr. Shaw’s arm which is holding tightly on to her. And she sees for herself that the old truck is rolling slowly along the little farm road.

The major seems confused. He listens for a few moments and asks if anyone can hear an engine.

“I don’t hear anything,” says Dr. Valentine.

Rose crouches down on the rich, pine-needle-covered earth. The needles poke into her knees, but not enough to hurt. The major tells everyone to wait here, and he goes back to the truck and soon returns with the binoculars.

“What do you see,” says Dr. Valentine.

“Well, the windshield of that truck is pretty filthy, but I can see two people. Looks like a man and a woman.” Connors lowers the binoculars and tells the group to stay alert, and if anyone sees anything weird to let him know. He shrugs his shoulders and says, “This looks weird as hell. Where would two, old people be going in a broken-down old truck? Dr. Valentine, if anything goes squirrelly down there, you get the kid and get out of here.

Everyone is trying to get a good look at who is inside the truck. Rose has very good eyesight and can see immediately that the two people in the truck aren’t moving. Something might be wrong with them. She backs away and tells Dr. Valentine that they need to leave, but it’s too late the truck is rolling toward them, and it’s turning so that the driver’s side comes into clear view.

A Wicked Briar is pushing the truck forward. It has the man in the truck impaled on its foreclaw, manipulating the man like a puppet. It used the truck and the dead people inside as a decoy so it could get close enough to attack.

“Run!” Connors says.

Dr. Valentine and Dr. Shaw each pull at one of Rose’s arms, and together they drag her along behind them. Another Wicked Briar burst out from where it, and several others were hiding in a barn. It’s an entire nest of the creatures.

“We’re not going to make it,” says Dr. Valentine.

The Wicked Briars are quickened with the notion of a feast. They’re slinging long barbed threads in every direction, to slow their prey’s escape. And steadily they surround the group. Rose falls to the ground, and Dr. Valentine nearly falls on top of her.

The men and Dr. Valentine are firing their weapons. The loud pops of gunfire assaults Rose’s ears. She puts her fingers in them to block out some of the sounds. The monsters are growing closer. The bullets don’t do anything to slow them down. Rose thinks this is the last time she’ll ever see Dr. Valentine because they’re all going to die. It will also be sad not to see Dr. Shaw again, too, because lately he’s been nicer than Dr. Valentine to her.

The monsters are close enough to tear them into bloody little scraps, but they stop dead still before they make their move. The Turned loom over them, as if to say, checkmate. It has grown quiet, except for the faint ringing in Rose’s ears from the gunshots.

The Wicked Briars ease away from the group and shift their focus on the road from the direction, Connors, Shaw, Valentine, and Rose had come from. Rose follows their gaze but can see nothing. The Wicked Briars suddenly lose interest and skitter away, and in no time, they are gone from sight.

“What happened?” says Shaw.

“They had us, why’d they let us go?” says Dr. Valentine.

“The Major is scanning with the binoculars again. There’s something out there, but I can’t tell what. It’s using the trees for cover. We most definitely aren’t going back to the truck. We’re on foot from here on out.” The major lowers his binoculars.

“Maybe we can use those,” says Rose. pointing to the horses, grazing beyond the fence.

“Horses,” says Dr. Valentine.

“Shaw,” says Connors, “You and Dr. Valentine head on over to the barn, see if you can find some feed or something we can lure them over with. If not, then see if you can find a lasso or some rope. Be careful.”

“Right,” says Shaw.

“How far do you think we are from the ship, Major?” says Rose, never taking her eyes off the scary road behind them.

The ship can be seen in the distance; a massive vehicle coated with a blackened and wrinkled outer skin, veiled in a haze. “I’d say by the look of it, we should be there in an hour or so if we can catch the horses.”

While the major is keeping watch on the road behind them, Rose decides that she wants to see these beautiful animals for herself. The horses spook a little at her presence and run from her, but soon they settle down and return to sniff at her outstretched hands. The horses sniff the air for danger and step closer to her. She leans over the fence. The wood presses painfully into her stomach, but she doesn’t care. She wants them to come to her. She can smell them now. They whinny and neigh at her. She can feel the softness of a horse’s muzzle on her hands, and then another, and another. She can feel their breath on her face, warm and moist and with a fresh smell of grass. Their scent smells so sweet to her.

She steps down from the fence just as the doctors are coming back with some rope, they found in the barn. Rose releases the latch which holds the gate closed and it swings out and opens, pretty easily. The horses follow her silently. “They’ll carry us to where we want to go, they told me so,” says Rose. “And I want this one,” she says, indicating a palomino, that on one side looks as a horse should, but on the other, only an image of a horse reconstructed of interwoven vines and green lush leaves. Rose could feel danger growing closer and closer. Something was coming for them. Something bad.

No one asked Rose what she meant by the horses telling her they would carry them to the ship, and no one, but no one wanted the Turned-horse, so the colonel sat her up on it. There were some bridles, but there were no saddles so everyone would have to ride bareback towards Petit Jean and the crashed ship. A cold, treacherous feeling crept closer and closer. The pressure in the air pressed down until something snapped. Behind them, a cloud of birds, hundreds of them, broke from the trees and took to the air, and following them, a flash of red bled out from the towering pines.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes they win.”

-Stephen King

Three minutes. That’s all the time there is, between mounting the horses and the arrival of the Red Queen and what remains of her colony of warriors.

An impressive Wicked Briar, it’s shell covered in scorch marks, and missing a foreclaw, breaks through a knot of soldiers and stands, panting and heaving, on the front line. The beast is three times larger than the other Wicked Briars which give way submissively, letting it take the lead.

Orange-peel texture and black soot cover most of the regiment, a result from the intense heat of the hydrogen plant explosion. How the Turned made it out alive is an unimaginable feat of survival, but they are lighter by at least a hundred.

The Major shouts for everyone to ride, and ride fast. Rose, who’s never ridden before, is frightened by the speed at which her Turned-horse takes off. She screams, startled, but the fear gives way to exhilaration and astonishment.

Rose chances a quick look over her shoulder and can clearly see the Red Army advancing at break-neck speed. Somehow, she knew the Red Queen wouldn’t easily fall into the trap the Colonel and the Major had set for her. She’s too smart for that.

The Major has spotted the queen too, and he points her presence out to Dr. Shaw and Dr. Valentine, who dig their heels into the horse’s flanks, and spurred onward, ever faster.

The Red Army is steadily closing the gap. The Wicked Briars, carrying the evil horde on their backs, are throwing up a whirlwind of dust as they tear after their prey.

The horses are foaming and snorting and shaking their manes. The winding roads through the mountains are treacherous, and in many places, with no one around to maintain them, they’ve been all but washed away by years of storms and flooding.

This one time, Dr. Valentine’s horse nearly loses its footing and nearly tumbles off a rocky ledge which overlooks an unassuming valley below, but she’s able to pull the horse away and keep up with the group.

The mountains tower around them, and the spaceship towers over the monoliths of stone. The shroud of mist which makes the ship appear wraithlike is at last clearing. The outer hull is curved gracefully, and sleek broad-leafed plates are molded and affixed to the black material covering the entirety of the craft itself.

Rose can see that it has come to rest in a deep chasm, which nature has sliced into the earth which runs through the Petit Jean National Park. The ship makes Rose feel comforted. It’s somewhat like a feeling of homecoming for her.

The demons are launching spears, and they are dangerously close to hitting the horses. The rumbling of hooves echoes throughout the switchbacks as the chase continues.

A massive pile of boulders hangs precariously over the very edge of one of the rocky cliffs high overhead. Some of the rocks are as large as houses.

“Major Connors, do you have another one of those green eggs?” Rose shouts over the galloping roar. She points high above to the boulders which are now beginning to send a small shower of rock chips and sand sliding down the mountainside.

The Major manages to hold onto the reins and fumble around his utility belt where a small pouch is hooked. He feels each pocket in turn until finally, he pulls a small grenade from one of them.

“It’s the last one,” he tells her.

To make this work, he will have to stop his horse so he can throw it. He shouts to Rose, Dr. Valentine, and Dr. Shaw to keep riding, in case this doesn’t work, they still must get Rose to safety.

There can be no more than a couple hundred yards between the major and the oncoming war party. He pulls up on the reins. His horse slides to a stop, hooves skidding on the road. Connors jumps down from his mount, pulls the pin and hurls the grenade high, where the massive pile of boulders rest. It falls short, ten feet from the heap of stone and then explodes. Nothing happens the rocks stay in place, but they are beginning to lean forward, gravity catching hold of them.

The Red Queen realizes what the major is trying to do and urges her troop onward as fast as she can. She beats on the hard exoskeleton of the Wicked Briar she rides, with her spear.

The boulders start to slide and then as if it’s a chain reaction, the entire pile rolls, and summersaults downward, landing between Connors and the Red Queen and her soldiers. A massive wave of dust fills the air, nearly blocking out the sunlight.

Connors doesn’t wait for the dust to settle. He mounts and catches up with the others, who are waiting just within sight of the boulder-clogged switchback.

“That’s not going to hold them up for long. We may have only bought ourselves a few minutes. Good thinking, kid,” says Connors, placing a hand on Rose’s shoulder. “That’s another one we owe you.”

She feels proud, and for the first time in a while, she feels accepted.

They set off again, not wasting any of the precious time the landslide bought them. The entrance to Petit Jean National Park lies directly in front of them. 3,471 acres of sprawling wilderness lay ahead. The ancient geology of the park is breathtaking. However, the alien ship, filling the canyon, and poking into the sky like a necrotic finger, is all anyone can look at.

Log cabins built along the canyon’s edge lay scattered as if blown away by high winds. Enormous trees lay down along the rim of the gouge in the earth. Some trees, hundreds of feet tall, span the distance from the edge of the canyon wall and the ship, acting as makeshift bridges.

“Okay, so, we’re here. Now what do we do?” says Dr. Shaw.

“Well, Shaw. I don’t care what you do, but as for me, I would rather take my chance by going in there,” Connors points to the alien ship, “than staying out here and waiting for the Turned to catch up with us.”

“That goes for me, too,” says Dr. Valentine.

“We came here for the answer. That’s probably the best place to find them,” says Shaw. “We’re not going to find any waiting out here, but the problem is, how are we going to get into the thing?”

“We can walk across one of those trees,” Rose says, indicating some of the larger pines, which fell just perfectly to make a handful of stable, if precarious, crossing points. “They’re wide and level enough to get across.”

“Maybe once we get over there we can find something to defend ourselves with when that bunch of Turned shows up,” Connors says as he unbridles the horses and lets them go free. He slaps them each on the flank, and they run off together into the park.

They decide on one of the tree-bridges, but crossing it is far trickier and more dangerous than anyone wants to admit, but finally, they are standing on the hull of the craft.

There are large jagged holes spread across the exterior of the vessel, and the Major feels it would be best to try to enter through one of them.

Tensions are high, and there are only a few bullets, so if there’s anyone or anything in there, Rose hopes it’s friendly.

Entrance is gained, one at a time, through a place where the floor inside the ship isn’t too far down. Once inside they can all clearly hear beeping and buzzing, and low electrical humming. Dim lights of various colors blink and shimmer throughout the vessel.

“This ship still has an active source of power,” says Connors. “Everyone keeps their eyes open, and no one touches anything. Understood?”

No one answers. The experience of being inside an alien ship is overwhelming. Shriveled extraterrestrial bodies litter the corridors.

“Whoever they were, they were tall,” says Dr. Valentine.

The bodies are shriveled and dry, like tomato vines culled from a vegetable garden after an early blight.

“I wonder what happened. What killed them all?” says Connors.

“Rose,” says Dr. Shaw. “Do you have any knowledge of this vessel? Can you sense anything, or does it remind you of anything?”

“No, Dr. Shaw. I’ve never been here before.”

“I know you haven’t, but I was hoping maybe you might know, like you knew about the picture of the jeep, before.”

“I’m sorry,”

“It’s okay, Rose,” Let us know if you recognize anything that might help us,” says Shaw.

“Look around for something that might be a weapon. We need to be ready to fight those things off when they come.,” says Connors.

They follow a corridor leading up a spiral staircase, which, in turn, lets out to a room filled with chairs and controls dispersed throughout. The Major thinks this may be the bridge of the ship, because of its location near the forward hull and the layout of the control systems.

A sleek wall to one side of the room is filled with flat glass panels, and on them are images of the inner ship. Some of the panels show the land surrounding the vessel.

Rose quietly studies the levers, switches, dials, and buttons, and flickering lights, while Major Connors searches for weapons to fight the Red Queen when the time comes. Dr. Valentine and Dr. Shaw intrigued with the technology of the ship, talk amongst themselves on the other side of the bridge.

On one of the flat panels, there’s movement. Small symbols, like the ones Rose has seen in her mind before, scroll across the glass screen. The symbols spell out the word SEVENTY-THREE UNIDENTIFIED LIFEFORMS DETECTED. LOCATION OUTER SHIP PARAMETER. The Red Queen and her Hive have arrived.

“Major Connors! Look,” says Rose.

The Major rushes across the supposed bridge. He’s still found nothing that would serve as a weapon. The Turned have come, and they’re looking for a way in.

“What in the hell are we going to do?” says, Dr. Shaw.

“They’re coming across on the trees,” says Dr. Valentine. “If they get in here, we’re all dead.”

Rose jolts. She notices a control panel laid out before her. The schematic, and the purpose, and the knowledge of when and how to use it, flash before her vision.

Before anyone can stop her, she shouts, “I know what to do!” She punches a button and a for the briefest time the flickering lights dim all around them, draining power from the ship’s limited supply.

Something somewhere made a whirring noise, and one by one the trees bridging the gap, from rim to craft are vaporized, along with any Turned unfortunate enough to be on the trees at the time. Other Turned who were waiting to cross, were thrown back from the perimeter of the ship.

“What did you do, Rose?” says Connors.

“It’s like an invisible barrier,” says Dr. Valentine. “Incredible.”

“How long will it keep them out?” asks Dr. Shaw.

“Not long. The ship is dying,” says Rose, she looks saddened by the thought. “They will be in before the sun goes down.”

“That’s an hour from now,” says Connors, watching the panel, showing the Red Queen rampaging along the rim of the canyon, and her soldiers throwing their spears, only to be harmlessly reflected away from the invisible barrier.

There is a schematic of the ship on one of the panels, and Connors asks if Rose can point out an armory.

“It was here,” says Rose, pointing to a section of the vessel, entirely destroyed by the crash.

“What about a science department or a medical facility?” says Dr. Shaw.

“Here.” Rose places her little finger down on the glass panel.

“It’s not far,” says Dr. Valentine, who glances at Connors.

“You and Dr. Shaw go. See if you can find out anything about the Turned, what they are, why they’re here, who these dead aliens are, anything the fuck at all,” says Connors. “I’m going to keep searching for weapons and keep my eyes on our friends out there.”

The craft is vast, and there are many twists and turns throughout. The ship seems to have no logical layout, and at closer scrutiny appears to be something that would have been grown rather than constructed; or maybe a bit of both. There is a multitude of organic components built into the walls and floors and arched ceilings.

Finally, Dr. Valentine, Dr. Shaw, and Rose come to the place where Rose indicated the medical facility was located.

The chamber is outfitted with several long, rounded pods. The pods look more like an oversized magnolia blossom than a piece of otherworldly medical equipment. Inside are more shriveled up alien corpses.

Dr. Valentine is startled by movement above. It’s just birds, thank God. But now, something that isn’t ‘just birds’ is speaking in a robust and guttural voice. It reminds her of a mix of Swedish and Russian.

“What is it?” Dr. Valentine says.

A shadow falls across her. Something is moving between one of the gaping holes in the hull and where she and Rose are standing. Dr. Shaw is several feet behind them.

“What is it saying, Rose, do you know?” says Dr. Shaw.

“It’s saying something about detecting an injured lifeform entering the room. I have a strange feeling, it’s talking about me,” says Rose, though she’s only certain when a light-bodied sphere floats across the room and shines a light in her face. Its exterior casing reminds Rose of the leafy texture of the hull of the spaceship.

Dr. Valentine shouts and reaches out for Rose, but the moment her hand makes contact with the girl’s arm, a blue light shines down on them, and she’s bombarded with memories and thoughts that aren’t her own.

Her mind is connected with Rose’s, and together they stand locked in a beam of light, and it’s speaking in an alien language, but Dr. Valentine can somehow understand precisely what it’s saying.

“Head trauma. Loss of memory detected. Conducting repair to host’s brain,” says the voice.

A tangle of vines springs from the sphere and touch Rose’s face and neck. They undulate and pass over her skull, then there are images forming as if from vapor, but then they become as tangible as if they are right in front of them. They are images of what must be Rose’s forgotten memories.

“Come down from that tree. You are going to break your fool neck,” The woman is laughing out of sheer nervousness. “Now get down right now and go wash up for dinner.”

“Okay, mommy,” says Rose.

The undulating vines reposition themselves and Rose moans.

“Mommy, mommy,” cries a small girl.

It’s Rose, but much younger. Her bedroom door bursts open, and a woman comes in.

“What is it, baby sweet?” says the woman.

Rose can only point at the rocking chair in the corner. A pile of clothes sits there, still unfolded. “Monster! It was looking at me.”

“It’s not a monster, just laundry, see, baby sweet?” The woman hugs and kisses Rose and tucks her in, before taking the clothes and leaving the bedroom. The vision dims.

“Not a monster, baby love,” Rose echoes as if she’s reliving the moment.

The image changes and a green man shoots her with a sharp needle, full of medicine, and she’s getting very sleepy. She tries to climb and get away, but she can’t hold onto the tree. She slips. Then she screams and falls to the ground where blackness consumes her.

Images as thin as a veil come and go, pulsing like a dying heartbeat. Visions of waking up at Camp Able with Dr. Shaw holding his sharp knife over her. Images of the time she spent as a research subject, and of the trip from Texas to where they are trapped inside this alien ship, with a Red Queen biding her time outside, waiting to kill all of them.

There is something more here though. The light is changing from blue to red-orange. And the voice says, “Communication with symbiont established.”

Dr. Valentine feels fatigued and short of breath. The red-orange light is eating away at her. She can feel that Rose is experiencing the same level of exhaustion. This is taking a toll on them both.

There are more images coming into view. Alien images. It’s difficult to conceive their meaning at first, but then Dr. Valentine slowly begins to understand. Rose is being given information about what has happened, more so, what has gone wrong.

Dr. Valentine stirs, the world is coming back to her one, unfocused, frame at a time.

“How long have I been out?” she says.

“About an hour,” says Dr. Shaw, helping her to stand on her unsteady legs.

She rubs her face and tries to make sense of her surroundings.

“What happened to you?” says Connors, who has joined them.

She fumbles for the right words, they escape her. She’s talking incoherently, but then she stops trying, remembering the visions she shared with Rose. She swallows hard. “Where is Rose?”

“She came to just a few minutes before you did, Emara,” says Shaw. “what happened?”

Dr. Valentine ignores the question. “Where is she?”

“She says she knows how to stop the Turned. She went up there,” says Shaw gazing up to the gaping maw in the hull, high overhead.

“Oh God, we have to stop her,” says Dr. Valentine, trying to gain a secure purchase on the floor beneath her feet, which seems to be doing its best to move from beneath her.

“What is going on?” shouts Connors, who is already chasing after her.

Dr. Valentine doesn’t answer, she’s already making her way to a pile of fallen beams and pseudo-metallic gridwork, and vines, and cables, which appear to be the only and quickest way up to the hole in the roof, and to the outer hull beyond. She wastes no time starting her ascent.

Connors and Shaw are climbing up close behind her. She knows only one thing. Her initial hopes that Rose was a cure, that she could be saved that she is just a child and not a monster… they were all rubbish. She was wrong. She just didn’t realize until now how wrong she was.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“The only way out is to die.”

-Bullet for My Valentine

Rose’s feet are planted on the hull of the ship. Far below them, she can hear someone climbing up to where she is.

The Red Queen has spread her army out along the canyon edge, and they are unceasingly testing the failing barrier with stones and sticks, saving their spears for the moment when it fails altogether. And it will fail. It’s only a matter of time. It’s already shimmering and crackling. Phasing from invisible to the visible spectrum of light, showing delicate crosshatches of muted colors.

Rose has changed. She’s grown. She feels the difference. The vines growing in her hair, have grown thicker, and longer, and the buds are full and swelling, on the precipice of blooming.

The very sight of her enrages the Red Queen immediately. Not too long ago this would have frightened Rose, but no longer. Rose knows what to do now. She knows how to bring down the Red Queen and the Turned. She had forgotten for a long time what she was supposed to do, but since being treated in the ship for her amnesia, she can remember everything.

A solitary bud opens into a beautiful yellow flower, as Dr. Valentine’s head emerges from the rift in the hull.

“Rose, stop,” says Dr. Valentine.

Rose isn’t surprised to see Dr. Valentine, or Dr. Shaw, or Major Connors, who climb from the hole.

“I can help, Dr. Valentine,” Rose says with a smile.

Dr. Valentine doesn’t smile in return. Instead, the woman who Rose thought cared for her, pulls her pistol.

“I can’t let you do this,” says Valentine. A tear forms in the corner of her eye.

“Wait,” says Connors. “That girl has saved our lives on more than one occasion.”

“What is this?” says Dr. Shaw. “What is it you can’t let her do?”

“You were right, Shaw. You were right about her. About all of them.”

A rock clacks against the invisible barrier, and the shield flashes and sizzles brightly where it struck against it. The smell of ozone fills the protected bubble between shield and ship.

“I can make it all better. I can make the Turned go away forever,” says Rose.

“What the hell is going on, Dr. Valentine?” says Connors. “You tell me right now, that’s an order.”

“This ship,” Dr. Valentine says, “the dead aliens inside it, they’ve been watching us, for a long time. They go to inhabited planets. We aren’t the only world with life on it. They invade slowly over a period of generations, taking it for themselves before anyone becomes the wiser. But something went wrong this time. The Aliens became sick, and the ship was damaged. They were never meant to be discovered. This is how they propagate their species. They study the inhabitants of the planet and program certain, compatible seeds with information of that world. That’s how Rose knew things that she couldn’t possibly have known. It was all preprogrammed.”

“But, she says she can fix it,” Shaw says.

“I saw everything she plans to do. Everything she has to do. Our minds were somehow connected… in the ship. By that alien sphere. She’s not going to fix it. This isn’t going to go the way you think. She’s going to destroy everything. EVERYTHING! She’s not a cure, she’s a weapon of mass destruction. Insurance. The Turned out there…,” Dr. Valentine sweeps her arm across the horizon, “…are an accident. When we blew a hole in this ship, it released seeds that were not compatible for the invasion of Earth… of the human species. That’s the reason for all the different mutations. Rose and the other children… what’s inside them…. The symbionts… they’re compatible with our DNA, that’s why they look so human, and the symbiont inside them was able to move in and take over the host body so effortlessly. But There’s something else. Rose is different. One out of a hundred thousand. If anything goes wrong with the invasion, she has the ability to wipe the slate clean and with it… us.”

“Not everything, Dr. Valentine. The Turned-animals and plants and the Turned-children will survive,’ cries Rose, her heart sinking with anguish because of what she has become in Dr. Valentine’s eyes.

“I can’t let you do it,” says Dr. Valentine. She lifts her sidearm and fires directly at Rose’s head.

A mist of warm, copper-scented blood sprays into the air and a fine speckling of it covers Dr. Valentine’s face, she stands stunned that she has killed, not Rose, as she has intended, but Major Connors who threw himself in front of Rose at the last second. But there is no time to weep before his body slides down the curved hull of the ship, and tumbles into the immense canyon and disappears from sight.

Rose whimpers and tears trail from her eyes. The woman who had once come to her rescue, the woman she had loved like the mother she’d never known, has caught a spear, deep in her back. The barrier has finally failed.

The last rays of the sun are dowsed behind the mountains, and the buds in her hair have all blossomed into beautiful, but deadly flowers in the moonless evening. The stars are beginning to peep out one by one.

Dr. Shaw falls to the hull, hopeless and beaten.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Shaw,” says Rose. Delicate golden-red pollen, from her blooms, catches a ride on a gust of wind and blows toward the Red Queen and her Army. They are preparing to launch their spears and destroy Rose and the remaining human. “We’ll die you know, but the Turned-children will create a new world after the evil is cleansed from it.”

“Self-sacrifice is a noble and human quality. Where did you learn it?” Asks Shaw.

“From Major Connors’s Bible. A man they called Jesus. Goodbye, Dr. Shaw,” she says, as the last of her pollen blows through the angry Queen’s ranks. They are infected with a deadly pathogen, and they’ll all be gone before the sun rises.

The spears are launched and fill the air with a death sentence. Rose looks toward the twinkling stars, and she imagines herself far away, gazing into the Milky Way, above her, on the ceiling of the world.

She’s a happy little girl.

Meet the author

H.R. Romero is a pen name for a well-known American author. He resides in a small Texas town with his family. He has several How-To books and Children’s novels to his credit.

He spends his free time pondering what it must be like to die, by holding his breath for hours on end.

You can contact the author at: HRRomeroAuthor@Hotmail.com

Copyright

The Girl Who’s Made of Leaves

COMING TO AUDIBLE.COM

Late 2018

Copyright © 2018 by H.R. Romero

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.