Hammer of God

CHAPTER 9

Alex, Sam, and Adira stood around the steel surgical table. The fragments of charred flesh recovered from the Golan Heights were now all in sealed jars. But the thing that held their riveted attention was the head of the being Alex had brought with him.

It balanced on the stump of its neck, twitching, eyes rolling, and mouth working. Thankfully, the eyes never seemed to focus, because if the thing managed to stare into their eyes, it might have been too horrifying to comprehend.

“How?” Adira said. “That’s all I want to know; how?”

Yair Shamir unfolded his arms. He had on plastic gloves and in one hand he held a long steel probe. He put the probe beside the head, and then gripped it in both hands, rolling it gently to the side, exposing the ragged flesh of the neck.

“See, no blood.” He bobbed his head. “When did you say you removed the head?”

“Last night… approximately ten hours ago.” Alex kept his eyes on the thing’s twitching features.

“Yesterday?” Yair raised his eyebrows, picking up the probe. “There’s no blood, and there hasn’t been blood in this thing for weeks, perhaps months.” He indicated the tubes and flesh hanging from the neck, and then scraped at it with the probe. But all that came free was a sticky black substance more like tar than any sort of bodily fluid or excretion.

He leaned forward onto the table, resting on his forearms. “Cells are wonderful things. They can grow, they can repair themselves, and even replace their own parts. They can also split and duplicate themselves. We have cells that are highly specialized — some programmed to be sensitive to light, heat, sound, or pressure; others for the creation of materials such as hair and bone; and still others for the manufacture of things like milk, hormones and adrenalins.”

He saw Adira’s impatient expression, and sped up. “We also have nerve cells, which transmit electrical impulses — how our brain gets our biological mechanics to work, which gives us movement. In fact, some would say, we are nothing but water, and small packets of electrical charges stored in the minute back alleys of our mind.”

He used the probe to rake at the darkened flesh again. A sweet cloying smell was filling the room the more he scraped at it. Yair narrowed his eyes, and leaned in closer to the stump.

“But all cellular processes require energy, and among the basic properties of cells is the ability to generate energy. The energy is obtained through controlled oxidation of foods, and called cellular respiration. And this is what’s confounding me. You see, there are seven characteristics of life — movement, sensitivity, growth, respiration, the need for nutrients, excretion and reproduction. A thing can be classed as living if it exhibits some of these.”

He straightened, his face creased in a frown. “But this thing? This thing, he, is moving, but what else? He won’t grow, his cells don’t need food, or least food as we understand it. He’s not respiring, excreting, and is certainly not sensitive to light, heat, or anything really.”

“But it attacked us,” Adira said. “It saw us, moved fast, and was stronger than ten men. How can it not be alive?”

Yair shook his head. “I don’t know. Its brain is near mush, but it obviously sees, hears and has motor control.” He shrugged. “Yes, it’s moving, but this thing is no more alive than a wind-up toy. In fact, the cells are actually decomposing, right before our eyes.” He turned to Alex. “Did you destroy the body?”

Alex shook his head and took the long metal probe from the scientist to prod at the thing’s cheekbone.

“Ah, well, then it’ll make for a nice surprise when their cleaners come in the morning.” Yair chuckled.

The thing’s eyes seemed to fix on him. “It can’t see us — I don’t think so, anyway. It’s just like attaching electrodes to a dead frog. It’ll jump all right, but it isn’t alive.”

“Well, this here little frog killed one of our team and nearly broke me in half.” Sam glared, making Yair seem to shrink before him. “So, Doc, what exactly are the electrodes making this freak jump?”

Yair nodded. “Good question, Lieutenant Reid. Answering that from a scientific perspective, I would say some sort of power source we still need to determine.” He rested his knuckles on the steel bench top. “But if I were to answer as a religious man, and totally off the record, I would say, the scarification on his face is that of mystical incantations, and they have somehow imbued him with life.” He shook his head. “No, no, let me correct that; animation, not life, more a sort of… living death.”

“Living death?” Sam growled. “Well, ain’t that great? So if you sewed this thing back together, it’d try and attack us all over again.” He placed huge hands on his hips. “This is why it couldn’t be brought down by being blasted with around a hundred high velocity rounds; because it’s already freakin dead.”

“Great infiltration capabilities,” Alex said quietly, using the probe to prod one of its fluttering eyelids. “Immense strength, unbending focus, immune to fear, immune to any of the mortal requirements of sleep, food, water, or shelter — the perfect damned delivery mechanism.”

“And someone is launching them… right at us,” Adira said.

“Not just someone,” Alex said. “Hezar-Jihadi and possibly Iran.”

“I don’t get it.” Sam shook his head. “These jihadis loathe Iran as much as we do, and vice versa. They’re already fighting border skirmishes with them now.”

“No, it makes sense when you look at their underlying philosophies.” Adira began to pace. “They both believe the end of the world will begin in the Middle East. In fact, their core beliefs are of a final decisive war, and that the new caliphate awaits the army of Rome, that’s the West, and whose defeat at Dabiq will start the countdown to the apocalypse — the end of the world. To them, death is the pathway to heaven.”

“Iran’s a theocracy, sure, but gambling with possible nuclear retaliation is suicide on a mass scale. Their people would revolt.” Sam shook his head. “Not sure I buy that.”

Alex exhaled. “Maybe not so far fetched. Hammerson told me that Iran has invited us to join them in a military coalition… in Dabiq.”

“Fuck it, they’re trying to sucker us in.” Sam rubbed big hands up through his hair.

“Doesn’t matter,” Alex said. “Whether or not Iran believes in any of this, or even cares about it, they know that dragging America into another war in the Middle East only helps them. They get to watch us waste blood and treasure. And imagine if they could arrange for another nuke to be walked into the center of our army.”

Sam groaned. “That’d hurt us bad.” He folded huge arms. “Still begs one huge question — how the hell are they sewing bodies together and reanimating them?”

“I doubt you and I could do it, but someone has found the right mix of chemistry, alchemy, or perhaps even magic,” Adira said.

On hearing the word, Yair Shamir cleared his throat and Adira shot him a murderous glare. “What?” Her eyes blazed. “What?”

The scientist shook his head and waved both hands before him.

“Clarke’s third law.” Sam looked from under his folded brows, his eyes going from Yair back to Adira. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

A sticky sound drew their gazes back to the thing’s head. Its mouth opened and closed as if trying to speak, but its lips were gummed with the tar-like slime. Alex couldn’t take his eyes from the loathsome thing.

“I don’t care how they’re doing it,” Alex said. “Frankly, I’m not sure I even care why they’re doing it. But I think something else is driving them — there’s another motive we’re not seeing yet. The end result is the same: a lot of death rained down upon us. I only care about stopping it dead, and if it’s a single person or a whole lab full of high tech wizards creating these things and launching them at us, then we need to deal with it, conclusively.” He punctuated the word by stabbing down with the probe, driving it into the center of the thing’s skull and down into the steel bench below it.

“The stakes are high. We just don’t know how many nukes they have ready to go. We could set the whole Middle East on fire. Israel would be first into the inferno.” Adira grimaced.

“As far as I’m concerned, the inferno will be upon us if we don’t act.” Alex straightened. “They like playing with the dead so much; I say, we go and help them join the ranks.”

“Into Iran?” Sam asked, a grin beginning to split his face.

Alex looked back down at the head and saw its eyes were firmly fixed on him. Alex’s smile was grim. “Hammerson said we’re to follow the leads, wherever they take us. Then we terminate with extreme prejudice.”